What Led to Lindsay Clancy Mistrial? Jurors Reveal How Close They Were to Reach Not Guilty Verdict Till Lone Holdout Refused to Agree

The jury foreperson in Lindsay Clancy’s closely watched triple-murder trial revealed how narrowly the panel came to declaring the mother not guilty by reason of insanity, with the verdict ultimately derailed by a lone male juror who refused to agree.

“She said he acknowledged that he had reasonable doubt after we watched the interview video,” the juror told NBC 10 Boston while speaking alongside two other female jury members. “I started filling out forms, I was so excited,” she said. “There were three forms I had to fill out and I started filling them out, I wrote my signature on each one but then he said, ‘But I’m still not going to say she’s not guilty by reason of insanity.'”

So Near, Yet to Far

One of the three jurors, Paula, is a former government contractor, while Kelly works as a chef in Plymouth. The jury foreperson, Ronnie, is a retired fifth-grade special education teacher.

The jurors described the holdout as “arrogant,” saying he largely kept to himself, refused to engage with the rest of the panel, and was unwilling to consider their views or interpretations of the evidence presented during the trial.

“He was very arrogant. He really did not take anything that anybody said,” one of the women claimed.

Another juror described how tense and frustrating the deliberations became, saying that at times, the jurors would get up and walk around the room because they could no longer sit still. They would gather around the cart holding the trial exhibits, but the holdout juror rarely joined them.

“Every one of us in the hours of our frustration would get up and walk the room because you just couldn’t sit anymore. And we would all go to the cart with the exhibits. He, I think, got up to the cart once very briefly and went back to his seat.”

The juror said the man made little effort to engage with the others or understand their reasoning. “He would not interact with us and try to understand,” she continued. The jurors said they repeatedly read Judge William Sullivan’s instructions defining reasonable doubt to him, hoping it would help him reconsider his position.

“But he had the hardest time getting over the fact that Lindsay viciously killed her children,” she explained.

Venting Out Their Frustration

The jurors also told the outlet that they felt the prosecution failed to show enough compassion toward Clancy. During the trial, they learned that she had been dealing with severe insomnia, anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts and thoughts of harming her children in the four months before the killings.

“I just found it to be harsh — very, very harsh,” one juror said.

She also questioned the prosecution’s approach, pointing out that there were no character witnesses presented to portray Lindsay as a bad mother. “The fact that they had no character witnesses in regards to Lindsay being a bad mother … I found it to be biased.”

The foreperson said the testimony and evidence presented during the trial showed that Clancy cared deeply for her children. “All the witnesses and evidence proved that she loved her children … so she had to have snapped,” she said.

The three jurors also offered their impressions of Reddington, describing him with a mix of words including “entertaining,” “arrogant,” “compassionate” and “funny.” One juror was particularly struck by his attitude toward Clancy. “His compassion for Lindsay was amazing,” she said.

The case ended in a mistrial last Friday after the jury sent the judge a third note saying they had reached an impasse and could not agree on a verdict.

The day before, the foreperson had alerted Judge William Sullivan in a note that one juror allegedly refused to apply the legal standard for reasonable doubt. Sullivan then questioned each juror separately under oath and once again read the panel his instructions explaining the law surrounding reasonable doubt.

The 12-member jury, made up of nine women and three men, spent nearly 38 hours deliberating over seven days. They first told the judge they were unable to reach a verdict on Tuesday, followed by another deadlock notice Wednesday and a final one Friday.

Clancy’s attorney, Kevin Reddington, urged jurors to find the 36-year-old former nurse not criminally responsible, arguing that she was suffering from severe postpartum psychosis when she killed her three children — Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and 8-month-old Callan — on Jan. 24, 2023. Reddington said Clancy had heard a voice commanding her to strangle the children.

Prosecutors presented a very different account, arguing that Clancy had deliberately planned the killings. They also claimed she fabricated the story about hearing a voice and suffering a psychotic episode in an attempt to escape criminal responsibility.