Clancy trial holdout claims other jurors used phones, posted on social media

Michael Desronvil was the one juror who would not budge. While eleven others in the Lindsay Clancy trial voted to acquit her of murdering her three children by reason of insanity, Desronvil held firm—refusing to sign off on the defense's argument that severe postpartum psychosis had driven her to kill Callan, eight months old; Dawson, three; and Cora, five. The hung jury meant mistrial, and now the case has fractured again, this time over what happened in the deliberation room itself.

Clancy's defense attorney Kevin Reddington moved to investigate Desronvil, alleging the holdout juror had used his cell phone during the seven days of deliberations. Reddington asked the judge to subpoena Desronvil's phone records and have the device examined by a neutral third party. The motion cited testimony from fellow juror Nick Dargie, who told ABC News that Desronvil had not engaged with other panelists and spent time scrolling on his phone. It was a straightforward accusation: the holdout had broken the rules, and his misconduct may have tainted the verdict.

Desronvil's response, delivered through his spokesperson Ray Marcel, turned the accusation outward. Yes, Desronvil had his phone, Marcel said—but so did everyone else. And unlike Desronvil, several other jurors had actually used theirs, posting to social media while deliberations were underway. Marcel, who hosts a true-crime YouTube channel called "Fugitive TV," said Desronvil had told him that phones were never collected or secured. "He said everybody had their phone on them. It wasn't like they took their phones away and locked them away," Marcel recounted. He added that jurors had allegedly posted on social media and discussed the case with friends outside the jury room.

Marcel also defended Desronvil's own phone use, arguing it was minimal and justified. Desronvil had looked up two terms during deliberations—"psychosis" and "altruistic filicide"—to ensure he understood them correctly. Marcel pointed to the jury instructions, which he said contained a "gray area" that did not explicitly prohibit jurors from looking up words they didn't know once they went home. "They never said 'give me your phone or lock it up in this locker' or anything like that," Marcel said. Under Massachusetts trial court rules, jurors are permitted to carry phones but are barred from using them during trial or deliberations. Judges can require phones to be surrendered before deliberations begin, but there is no indication that Judge William Sullivan did so in Clancy's case.

Marcel escalated his defense on social media, posting on X that the judge had already instructed jurors to stop using electronic devices—after they had already been using them to look up definitions. This meant the court was already aware of the problem, Marcel argued. He also alleged that one juror had posted in a Karen Read Facebook group, a separate case that had nothing to do with Clancy's trial. The implication was clear: if the court was going to investigate phone use, it needed to investigate all of it, not just Desronvil's. "If Michael's communications are relevant, then the same standard should apply across the board," Marcel wrote. "Don't single out one juror."

The dispute exposes a gap in jury management. Desronvil's refusal to convict—his insistence that postpartum psychosis, however severe, should have shielded Clancy from murder convictions—was his right as a juror. But now that decision is being scrutinized through the lens of his conduct in the room. The question of whether he consulted his phone becomes entangled with the larger question of whether the jury process itself was compromised. And if other jurors were doing the same thing, the focus on Desronvil alone begins to look selective, a way of discrediting the one person who disagreed.