Female Clancy jurors complain about 'very arrogant' male holdout, were 'very excited' to acquit child killer

Jurors on the Lindsay Clancy case are speaking out for the first time following the declaration of a mistrial on Friday, after one male juror held out against 11 others who wanted to find the Massachusetts mother charged with killing her three children not guilty.  

The three female jurors who spoke with NBC 10 Boston were identified as retired chef Kelly, retired fifth-grade special needs teacher Ronnie, and Paula, who worked for government contractors. NBC 10’s Sue O’Connell said the jurors thought the prosecution “showed no compassion during the trial, and Ronnie talked a lot about how managing those deliberations was harder than her work as a fifth-grade teacher.”

The three female jurors spoke out about the holdout juror that led to the mistrial declaration. One of the jurors described the man as “very arrogant. He really did not take anything that anybody said.” He said he “completely disregarded the information” that nurses on the jury spoke about regarding a toxicology report.

The jury’s foreperson said that the man “admitted he had reasonable doubt,” and that she started filling out her various forms at that point, being "very excited." She added, “And then he said, ‘but I’m still not going to say that she’s not guilty by reason of insanity.” 

Another one of the jurors said that “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 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.”

“He would not interact with us and try to understand,” she continued. “We read to him on numerous occasions the definition of reasonable doubt from Judge Sullivan’s instruction. He actually said one day in the end, ‘well, why don’t we have the judge come in and read it again?’ And we were like, ‘no, we have it in front of us. We don’t need that.’”

She said the man “had the hardest time getting off the fact that Lindsay viciously killed her children.”

O’Connell said she was told the jury had argued so much during deliberations “that the alternate jurors could actually hear them and thought they were fighting a lot, and that they called each other some names that they can’t say on television. But they were determined to come to a verdict.” 

O’Connell said the jurors “also supported each other. There were hugs, there was laughter, there was a lot of self-care and group care.”