The lone Black juror in the Lindsay Clancy trial did the one thing a juror is entitled to do. He refused to join the other eleven. Days later, NBC10 Boston was going through his court records, contacting his relatives and his former wife, and reporting what it found about his personal history on television.
The mistrial came on September 4, after more than a week of deliberation in Plymouth County Superior Court. The panel split 11 to 1. Eleven voted to find Clancy not criminally responsible for the deaths of her three children, Cora, Dawson and Callan, in Duxbury in January 2023. One juror voted to convict on first-degree murder. Judge William Sullivan declared the mistrial and the jury went home.
Several of the eleven then went to the press and described the holdout as arrogant and unable to follow the court’s instructions on reasonable doubt. On Friday, juror Paula Devlin told Gayle King on CBS Mornings that the holdout was a Black man and the only person of color on the panel. The jury was nine women and three men, and by Devlin’s account, everyone else was white.
Within hours the framing flipped. Conservative commentators who had been mostly indifferent to the case turned him into a folk hero. Matt Walsh wrote that the man had been trashed all week and turned out to be the only Black person on the jury. Alex Berenson called him a champion. Curtis Houck pointed out that the eleven on the other side were all white. Ron DeSantis has since defended him as well. People who were critical of Clancy’s defense are now quoting the defense attorney’s remarks about the holdout back at him, because those remarks were aimed at the only Black man in the room.
Then came the digging. NBC10 Boston’s investigative unit reported that it had reviewed court documents and spoken with family members, and it aired findings involving a 2021 criminal allegation of domestic violence, a pending eviction over unpaid rent, and a restraining order that was active while he sat listening to evidence. The station said it was not identifying him because he has not chosen to speak publicly and the jury list is impounded. Withholding a name is not anonymity when you have published a person’s county, his housing case, his criminal history and the fact that his relatives talked to you. Anyone motivated to find him has a map.
There are real questions here that have nothing to do with which side of the case you were on. How did a news outlet get identifying details about a juror whose name is under seal, and who handed them over. Whether a juror’s unrelated personal history is news at all, given that jurors are screened by the court and the parties before they are seated, and that neither the prosecution nor the defense objected to him. And whether any of the eleven would be facing a records search right now if the split had gone the other way.
None of the reported details bear on whether Clancy was criminally responsible. That question was about postpartum psychosis, and it was decided by nobody, because the jury hung.
He still has not spoken. Every account of what happened in that room comes from the people who were trying to change his mind. Clancy’s attorney has signaled a new motion to dismiss, and prosecutors have to decide whether to retry the case, which would mean a new jury and the same evidence all over again. Clancy remains in a state psychiatric facility.
The next person called to serve on a case the country is watching will have read all of this.
