Three Lindsay Clancy jurors sat down with NBC10 Boston on Tuesday and described the moment they thought the case was over, only for one man on the panel to stop everything. The jury foreperson, Roni Carlson, a former elementary school teacher, said the holdout juror acknowledged out loud that he had reasonable doubt. “He admitted he had reasonable doubt and I started filling out the forms, I was so excited,” Carlson said. Then, she said, he added: “But I’m still not going to say that she’s not guilty by reason of insanity.”
Carlson spoke alongside two other members of the panel, Kellie Farina, a chef at a senior center, and Paula Devlin, who works for a defense contractor. It is the first public account from inside a deliberation room that stretched across seven days and ended Friday, Sept. 4, when Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial in Plymouth County Superior Court.
What the Lindsay Clancy jurors were deciding was never whether she killed Cora, Dawson and Callan inside the family’s Duxbury home on Jan. 24, 2023. That was not in dispute. The question was criminal responsibility, meaning whether her mental illness was severe enough that she could not appreciate that what she was doing was a crime or could not stop herself from doing it. Her attorney, Kevin Reddington, argued she was in postpartum psychosis, a rare and severe break from reality that can follow childbirth, and that she was heavily overmedicated. Under Massachusetts law, once the defense raises that issue, prosecutors have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she was criminally responsible. A single juror who will not agree means no verdict.
According to the jurors, the arguing inside the room got loud enough that the six alternate jurors sitting nearby could hear it, and there was name calling. All three of the Lindsay Clancy jurors who spoke had criticism for how prosecutors built their case.
The paper trail from last week matches what they described. Carlson, as foreperson, sent Sullivan notes saying one juror had acknowledged doubt but would not apply the reasonable doubt instruction the court had given. Sullivan issued what is called a Tuey-Rodriguez charge, which is essentially an instruction telling a deadlocked jury to keep working and to listen to one another without abandoning honest convictions. He then called each juror up to his bench individually during a sidebar with prosecutors, Reddington and Clancy present. Reddington wheeled Clancy up to the bench himself so she could hear what was being said. He filed a motion to remove the juror, arguing the problem was no longer a disagreement about evidence but a refusal to follow the law. Sullivan did not remove him. After a last-ditch appeal to the Supreme Judicial Court failed, the mistrial came down.
The panel was nine women and three men.
The jurors also addressed something that has followed this case online since 2023. Clancy’s ex-husband spoke about the conspiracy theories circulating on social media that have tried to point the finger at him.
Clancy survived a fall from a second-story window at the Duxbury house that same night and is now paraplegic. She has been held at Tewksbury State Hospital since May 2023, and that is where she is expected to stay. Whether she goes to trial again is up to the Plymouth County district attorney’s office, which could retry the same charges or pursue lesser ones.
There is one more development worth being clear about. In a Good Morning America interview this week, Reddington called on Trump to pardon Clancy. A presidential pardon only reaches federal crimes. Clancy is charged under Massachusetts state law, so the White House has no authority over this case at all. Any clemency here would have to come through the state.
