A juror who initially wanted to convict Lindsay Clancy of murdering her three children now says she switched her vote to acquit after being swayed by forceful fellow jurors, and still believes Clancy may belong in prison.
The unnamed woman, the fourth juror to speak publicly since the Massachusetts murder trial ended in a mistrial, told CBS Boston that she walked into deliberations believing Clancy was guilty and criminally responsible for strangling her three children with exercise bands inside the family's home in 2023. She walked out having voted to acquit, a decision she now frames with visible ambivalence.
"Originally, I felt that she was guilty and she was criminally responsible for it," the juror told CBS Boston. But when asked whether she still holds that view, she did not deny it.
"Maybe I still believe that, in a certain way."
That admission, from a juror who voted for acquittal, raises pointed questions about how the 11-1 majority formed in that deliberation room, and whether the lone holdout juror who refused to acquit was the only person in the room voting his actual conscience.
Clancy, 36, was charged with murder after she strangled five-year-old Cora, three-year-old Dawson, and eight-month-old Callan in 2023. She pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. The jury of nine women and three men deadlocked 11-1, and Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial.
Since then, three other jurors, foreperson Roni Carlson, Kellie Farina, and Paula Devlin, have spoken publicly. All three condemned the single male holdout who refused to vote not guilty. Carlson told NBC Boston she had been "so excited" to acquit Clancy before the holdout dug in.
The anonymous fourth juror's account complicates that narrative. She described "big personalities" dominating the deliberation room and acknowledged that those personalities influenced her shift from guilty to not guilty.
"There were some big personalities in that room, but at the end of the day, I feel like it just came down to an inability to move past your convictions."
She directed that last remark at the holdout juror. But her own account suggests the inability to hold a conviction cut both ways, she held one and abandoned it.
The juror's description of the atmosphere inside the room matched earlier reports of volatile deliberations. Shouting between jurors grew loud enough to be heard from other rooms inside the courthouse. The conflict between the holdout and the rest of the panel began almost immediately.
Foreperson Carlson previously claimed the holdout juror "admitted he had reasonable doubt" about Clancy's guilt by reason of insanity, the legal standard for acquittal, but still refused to vote accordingly. Carlson recalled him saying, "but I'm still not going to say she's not guilty."
During the trial itself, defense attorney Kevin Reddington tried to get that juror removed, arguing the man refused to follow the judge's instructions. Judge Sullivan declined, telling the courtroom he did not feel it was proper to side with one faction of the jury over another.
"I don't feel it is proper for me to side with one side or the other of the deliberations. I don't feel it's appropriate for me to say, I agree with one juror or the 11. I have asked if they are able to follow my instructions. They swore earlier that they could."
The anonymous juror, for her part, partially defended the holdout, a notable break from the other three jurors who have publicly attacked him.
"This standalone juror was not the only one that was unwilling to see things from the other side, so I'm going to kind of defend that individual."
That statement carries weight precisely because it comes from a juror who voted the other way. She is conceding that the pressure inside the room ran in one direction, toward acquittal, and that the holdout was not the only person who struggled to bend.
The juror said the prosecution's case left her without a decisive moment of certainty. She described the evidence as containing "too much gray area" and said no single piece of testimony made her feel 100 percent certain of criminal responsibility.
But one piece of evidence did leave a mark that had nothing to do with legal standards. The 911 call placed by Patrick Clancy, Lindsay Clancy's husband, when he discovered the bodies of his children was played behind closed doors during the trial. It has never been released to the public.
The juror described the recording in visceral terms.
"I will never be the same after that 911 call. If these people could have heard that visceral, blood-curdling scream. It was horrifying."
She said she believed Clancy was "not mentally healthy" and "in the throes of a significant mental crisis" at the time of the killings, language that tracks closely with the insanity defense Reddington mounted at trial. She described herself as the "perfect juror" because she does not have children of her own, which she suggested allowed her to weigh the evidence without the emotional weight a parent might carry.
Whether that detachment helped or hindered her judgment is a question the juror did not answer, and one the public is left to consider as political figures weigh in on the case and a retrial looms.
Defense attorney Kevin Reddington appeared on Good Morning America earlier this week and made a direct appeal to President Donald Trump, who had previously spoken publicly about the case.
"I'd like to say that perhaps Donald Trump, who felt compelled to speak out about this case. Mr President, I hope that you would consider this young lady, the type of person she is, what she's been through, and consider a pardon."
Reddington also described Clancy as "a wonderful, wonderful person" and said he felt "a very strong bond" with her. When pressed by interviewer George Stephanopoulos about his post-trial boast that he had "crushed" prosecutor Tim Cruz, Reddington offered a partial walk-back.
"I think I perhaps could have been a little more circumspect dealing with Tim Cruz, and instead of saying I crushed him, I could have said I did a good job."
At the same time, Reddington signaled he is open to negotiating a plea deal with Cruz to avoid a second trial. He said he has known the district attorney for 30 years and hopes Cruz will "revisit that issue" so both sides can "work something out."
Cruz has not publicly responded to that overture. No timeline for a retrial has been announced.
The case has drawn comparisons to other recent cases in which mothers who killed their children sought acquittal on mental health grounds, cases that test how far the legal system will stretch the insanity defense when the facts are undisputed and the victims are children.
The anonymous juror also addressed what she called "sick" conspiracy theories circulating online that accuse Patrick Clancy of murdering his own children and framing his wife. She rejected those claims. Patrick Clancy has not been charged with any crime, and no evidence presented at trial supported that theory.
The public campaign around the case, driven in part by social media sympathy for Clancy and hostility toward the holdout juror, has created an unusual post-trial environment. Three jurors publicly identified themselves to criticize a single colleague who voted his conscience. A fourth now admits she voted against her own instinct after facing pressure from dominant voices in the room.
During the trial, Clancy herself was brought to a sidebar conference with the judge, a rare move for a defendant, after the defense raised concerns about the holdout juror's conduct. Reddington told reporters at the time that Clancy had "a right to know what's going on." She is paralyzed from the waist down and uses a wheelchair following a suicide attempt after the killings.
The jury had deadlocked more than once before Judge Sullivan finally declared the mistrial, and the intensity of the deliberations was apparent long before the verdict failed to materialize.
Three children are dead. Their father's screams on a 911 call were so terrible that a juror says she will carry them for the rest of her life. And the woman who killed them may walk free, not because twelve citizens agreed she was not responsible, but because eleven of them shouted loud enough to drown out the twelfth, and at least one of those eleven isn't sure she was right.
When a juror admits she "maybe still believes" a defendant belongs in prison after voting to let her go, the system didn't work. It just stopped.
