Lindsay Clancy trial holdout juror defends vote
A mistrial in the Lindsay Clancy case prompts holdout juror Michael P. Desronvil to defend his position through a statement. Criminal defense attorney Mercedes Colwin breaks down the juror’s reasoning and outlines potential next steps for prosecutors in Massachusetts, including a possible retrial or negotiated plea deal as the high-profile legal battle continues.
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Lindsay Clancy’s defense has filed a double jeopardy motion seeking to have the three first-degree murder charges she faces for the strangling deaths of her young children dismissed.
Attorney Martin Weinberg, who also represented Karen Read in her double jeopardy claim, filed a motion for Clancy Monday raising claims under the Fifth, Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments. Read’s claim failed, but she was later acquitted of all homicide-related charges in her second trial.
Weinberg argued that there was no “manifest necessity” to declare a mistrial on Sept. 4 “given the absence of judicial inquiry regarding repeated reports that one juror was refusing to apply the Court’s instructions regarding reasonable doubt.”
The jury split 11-1, with only the holdout wanting to find her guilty. The others were in favor of finding her not criminally responsible for the children’s deaths after Clancy’s defense claimed she suffered from postpartum psychosis.
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Michael P. Desronvil, left, the lone holdout juror who forced a mistrial in the Lindsay Clancy case, has retained an attorney who once represented President Donald Trump. Clancy, right, faced three counts of first-degree murder in the strangling deaths of her three children. (Facebook/Brittany K and Greg Derr/The Patriot Ledger via AP, Pool)
Judge William Sullivan previously overruled a defense motion to have the holdout juror dismissed and replaced with an alternate, saying he felt it was not appropriate for him to get involved in the deliberations.
“The jury twice informed the Court that one of its members was refusing to apply the Court’s instructions regarding the fundamental concept of reasonable doubt,” Weinberg wrote. “After the first such report, the Court asked each juror individually whether he or she was able to apply the law. Upon receiving the second report, the Court tempered its response even further, simply reminding all jurors as a group of their obligation to follow its instructions generally. The Court denied Ms. Clancy’s explicit requests to go further.”
Weinberg’s motion argued that Sullivan’s decision to declare a mistrial before investigating the holdout is improper, alleging that the jury foreperson accused the holdout of making “statements acknowledging doubt but refus[ing] to apply it to the verdict as the law states.”
“Ms. Clancy, like all criminal defendants, had a Constitutional right to have her fate decided by an impartial jury of her peers, faithfully applying the law as instructed rather than superimposing the juror’s own view of legal right and wrong, including the foundational principle that, absent proof beyond a reasonable doubt of her guilt, she must be acquitted,” he wrote. “The multiple reports of a juror violating this bedrock principle, therefore, required a judicial inquiry sufficient to ascertain whether her right to an impartial jury was being violated.”
Read the double jeopardy motion:
Weinberg also argued that there was a legal basis for conducting a probe into the holdout before the mistrial was declared. However, Sullivan did not hold one.
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On Friday, Clancy’s trial attorney Kevin Reddington called for an investigation into the holdout juror who wanted to find her guilty of murder charges in connection with the strangling deaths of her three young children.
“[The other jurors] know that they were robbed — by one man — for whatever his agenda was, who stole seven weeks of the life of these other jurors that were so attentive, so beautiful, so wonderful and listened to this evidence,” he told reporters after leaving the courthouse following her mistrial.
Reddington is asking a Massachusetts judge to preserve juror records from all 12 panelists and six alternates, including their questionnaires, courthouse hallway surveillance video taken outside the deliberation room and sign-in sheets for the jurors’ cellphones.
Reddington is asking the court to conduct a “limited inquiry” into the holdout and for information on any potential background checks stemming from a February motion for access to prospective juror information filed by Plymouth County prosecutors.
Read the motion for an inquiry into ‘Juror Doe’:
He’s also seeking the holdout’s juror questionnaire and any supplemental filings, probation records and “Juror Doe’s record from the statewide domestic violence registry.” He is asking the judge to require prosecutors to divulge whether it has had any contact with the holdout as a defendant, complainant or subject going back to January 2021.
Additionally, Reddington is looking for the holdout’s phone records between the hours of 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. on each deliberation day and asking for the court to order an independent examination into his phone use during the deliberation period.
Lastly, he wants the holdout to be grilled regarding the truthfulness of his juror questionnaire and voir dire answers, his statements to the court on Sept. 3, and the use of a phone or outside information during deliberations.
Michael P. Desronvil, the lone holdout juror in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial, which ended in a mistrial. (Fugitive TV)
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“The court may also hear from Juror No. 10 limited to what he observed of Juror Doe’s phone use,” Reddington advised in the filing.
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Defense attorney Kevin Reddington addresses reporters as jurors weigh the case against Lindsay Clancy in the 2023 deaths of her three children. (Photo by JOSEPH PREZIOSO / AFP via Getty Images)
Clancy’s trial was declared a mistrial on Sept. 4 after jurors deadlocked 11-1 in favor of finding her not criminally responsible for the slayings due to mental illness or defect. Her defense had claimed she was suffering from postpartum psychosis and repeatedly sought help to no avail.
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Prosecutors argued that she acted deliberately and understood that strangling her children one by one with exercise bands was wrong.
Judge William Sullivan indicates he was going to declare a mistrial before changing course and giving Lindsay Clancy’s defense attorney one hour to appeal, as the jury in the case has indicated that they are unable to reach a verdict on Friday, Sept. 4, 2026, in Plymouth, Mass. (Greg Derr/The Patriot Ledger via AP, Pool)
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The lone holdout juror is referred to only as “Juror Doe” in the motion due to the court’s impoundment order protecting the jurors’ identities.
Callan, left, Dawson and Cora Clancy. The three children were killed at their Duxbury, Massachusetts, home in January 2023. (Lindsay Marie Clancy/Facebook)
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Prosecutors have not yet officially announced whether they’ll seek a new trial for Clancy, who faces three counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months.
Clancy’s attorney has separately asked the court to overrule the holdout and declare her not guilty, a routine motion that experts nonetheless have said rarely succeeds.
