The Lindsay Clancy holdout juror is speaking out for the first time, saying he never doubted that the Massachusetts mother knew what she was doing when she killed her three young children. Michael P. Desronvil, 48, of Bridgewater, was the only juror who refused to join the rest of the panel, and his vote forced a mistrial.
“I didn’t have any doubts,” Desronvil said in a statement to ABC News. “As I tried to explain different possible theories during deliberation, I kept getting cut off as if I had doubts based on the evidence presented. Based on all the physical evidence, key witnesses, and what the prosecution presented, I thought it was enough proof that she (Clancy) knew exactly what she was doing and planned.”
Clancy, 36, a former labor and delivery nurse, was charged with three counts of first degree murder in the January 2023 deaths of her children, 5 year old Cora, 3 year old Dawson and 8 month old Callan, at the family’s home in Duxbury, Massachusetts. She did not deny killing them. Her defense argued she was suffering from postpartum psychosis, a rare and severe mental illness that can strike after childbirth and cause hallucinations, delusions and a break from reality.
That made the trial about one question: whether Clancy was legally responsible. A verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity would have meant the jury agreed she committed the killings but found that mental illness left her unable to understand that what she was doing was wrong or to control her actions. In that case, she would typically be sent to a secure psychiatric facility instead of prison. A murder conviction could have meant life behind bars.
In a criminal trial, the jury has to be unanimous. Eleven jurors voted for the insanity verdict. Desronvil did not. After six weeks of testimony and seven days of deliberations, the jury was still deadlocked, and Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial on September 4.
His fellow jurors tell a very different story about what happened in that room. On the sixth day of deliberations, the jury foreperson, Roni Carlson, sent the judge a note saying Desronvil had acknowledged having doubt but would not apply it to the verdict the way the law requires. Clancy’s defense attorney, Kevin Reddington, asked the judge to replace him with an alternate. The judge said no. After the trial, juror Paula Devlin told NBC10 Boston he was “very arrogant,” and juror Nick Dargie said Desronvil could not point to evidence or testimony that backed up his position when asked.
Desronvil says those accounts are wrong, and that he was shut down every time he tried to lay out his reasoning.
The Lindsay Clancy holdout juror has paid a price for his vote. After the mistrial, he was publicly identified, his address and phone number were posted online, and he has received death threats. He first spoke on the streaming show Fugitive TV with Ray Marcel, where he was identified only as “Michael,” before releasing his statement with his full name.
He has now hired Edward Andrew Paltzik, a defamation and media law attorney, who called him an “American Hero and Champion of Justice” and said he is staying at an undisclosed location in a rural part of northern New England. Paltzik said his client remains unbroken because of his Catholic faith and vowed that the people who attacked him will be held accountable under the law.
What happens next is up to Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz, who has not said whether he will try Clancy again. A new trial would mean seating a brand new jury and making the same case from the beginning.
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