Holdout Juror in Clancy Case Denies Having Reasonable Doubt About Guilt

On September 4, a Massachusetts judge declared a mistrial in the case of Lindsay Clancy, the woman who killed her three children in January 2023. The jury had deadlocked 11 to 1—eleven jurors believed she should be found not guilty by reason of insanity, citing her severe postpartum depression and bipolar disorder. One juror, identified only as Michael, stood alone in voting guilty.

Now that juror is pushing back against claims made by his fellow panelists about his reasoning. Ray Marcel, who hosts a true crime streaming series called "Fugitive TV," conducted an interview with Michael on September 15 and shared the details publicly. According to Marcel, who discussed the conversation with Chris Cuomo on NewsNation the following day, Michael insisted he had never harbored reasonable doubt about Clancy's culpability. "He felt that she was sane when she did it," Marcel said. "He said, from day one, that he always felt that she was guilty, and he never displayed or said anything about reasonable doubt."

This directly contradicts what Roni Carlson, the jury's foreperson, told NBC 10 Boston. Carlson said Michael had admitted to her during deliberations that he did experience reasonable doubt. She recalled becoming excited when she heard this, thinking it might shift the outcome. But Carlson also noted something crucial: even while expressing that doubt, Michael had said he would not vote for acquittal on the grounds of insanity. The distinction mattered enormously—the jury was not deciding whether Clancy killed her children. She never denied that. The question was whether her mental illness rendered her not criminally responsible.

The identity of the holdout juror, kept confidential by court order, has become a point of scrutiny. The Boston Globe reported that another juror revealed Michael's full name, and the newspaper confirmed his identity through independent verification. In doing so, journalists discovered that Michael had faced a domestic violence charge years earlier and had a restraining order filed against him in connection with an alleged assault on his nephew. Paula Devlin, another juror, told the Globe that Michael should have been disqualified from the case given this history.

When the Globe attempted to reach Michael for comment, he did not respond. His brother, Michel Desronvil, defended him to the newspaper, saying Michael was eligible to serve and that he had never witnessed violence from him. "My view is that if they put him on the jury then he must be qualified to be there," Desronvil said. The newspaper could not independently verify whether Michael's prior charges or restraining order should have triggered his removal from jury duty.

Clancy, 36 years old, killed her children—Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, 8 months—in January 2023. Her defense team argued that she was suffering from severe postpartum depression and bipolar disorder at the time. The mistrial leaves the case unresolved. Judge William Sullivan has ordered that the names of all jurors remain withheld from the public indefinitely, extending a previous order that had set a concealment deadline of September 18. The question of whether a new trial will be held, and what it might reveal about jury selection and deliberation, remains open.