Clancy defence seeks probe into lone guilty-vote juror's phone use

A Massachusetts courtroom erupted into recrimination this month when a jury of twelve could not agree on the fate of Lindsay Clancy, a mother accused of killing her three children. The split was stark: eleven jurors believed she should be found not guilty by reason of insanity. One did not. Now her defense attorney is asking a judge to investigate that lone holdout.

Clancy does not dispute the facts of what happened. She killed her children—Cora, five years old; Dawson, three; and Callan, who was eight months old—at their home in Massachusetts. The question that divided the jury was whether she was criminally responsible when she did it. Her defense argued she was gripped by postpartum psychosis, a severe mental illness that rendered her incapable of knowing the nature of her actions. Prosecutors countered that she had made a deliberate choice: she sent her husband away on an errand so she could strangle the children without interruption.

When the jury could not reach unanimity, the judge declared a mistrial. But the acrimony did not end there. The juror forewoman, a retired fifth-grade teacher, gave an interview to NBC in which she said the lone holdout juror, identified in court filings as Michael Desronvil, had actually admitted during deliberations that he harbored reasonable doubt about Clancy's guilt. If true, that admission would have obligated him under jury instructions to vote for acquittal on the insanity defense. Desronvil denies he ever said any such thing. He has stated publicly that he had "no doubt about her guilt" and that he believed there was "enough proof that she knew exactly what she was doing."

On Friday, Clancy's attorney, Kevin Reddington, filed a motion asking the court to investigate Desronvil's conduct during the trial. Reddington wants the judge to examine the juror's mobile phone records—specifically all calls and text messages made between 8 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. on each day the jury deliberated. He also wants the court to scrutinize the answers Desronvil gave during jury selection and on the prospective juror questionnaire, questioning whether he was truthful about his views and potential biases. In a separate motion, Reddington asked that the charges against Clancy be dismissed entirely. Prosecutors have not yet indicated whether they intend to retry the case.

Desronvil has hired an attorney to defend himself against these allegations. Edward Paltzik issued a statement calling the defense motion "disgusting" and framing it as an assault on constitutional rights. "If the new normal is that jurors are going to face brutal reprisals for disagreeing with a defense attorney, you can kiss the Sixth Amendment goodbye," Paltzik wrote on social media. He characterized his client's actions as nothing more than the performance of civic duty—a juror voting his conscience based on the evidence presented.

Desronvil has offered his own account of the deliberations. He said that when he tried to present alternative theories during jury discussions, he was repeatedly interrupted and silenced, as though his colleagues assumed he harbored doubts he did not actually hold. The forewoman's account directly contradicts this. She said Desronvil acknowledged reasonable doubt but refused to vote for acquittal on the insanity defense anyway—a position that would constitute juror misconduct if proven, since jurors are bound by the law as given to them by the judge.

The case now sits in legal limbo. A woman who admits to killing her three children waits to learn whether she will face trial again. A juror who cast the deciding vote faces investigation into his conduct and his honesty. And the question of what actually transpired in that jury room—whether Desronvil truly expressed doubt he later denied, whether his phone use during deliberations reveals anything material, whether his answers during selection were candid—remains unanswered. The court will have to decide whether to grant Reddington's request and, if so, what that investigation will reveal.