Jurors in Lindsay Clancy trial describe deadlock caused by single holdout

Three jurors in the Lindsay Clancy trial described thinking they had an acquittal — until a single holdout juror declared that he wouldn’t say Clancy was not guilty by reason of insanity.

The group of jurors, which included the foreperson, spoke with Boston’s NBC10 on Tuesday, four days after a judge declared a mistrial when jurors failed to reach a unanimous verdict on whether Clancy was criminally responsible for killing her three children in 2023.

Clancy, 36, a former nurse, does not deny killing Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and 8-month-old Callan in the basement of her Massachusetts home before trying to take her own life. However, her attorney argued that postpartum psychosis led to her actions, which left her paralyzed. Prosecutors claimed she knew what she was doing when she killed her kids.

After seven days of deliberations, all but one juror was persuaded to find Clancy not guilty by reason of insanity. But the final juror, a man, would not listen to the rest of the panel, the jurors told NBC 10.

“He admitted he had reasonable doubt. I started filling out the forms; I was so excited,” jury foreperson Roni Carlson said.

However, she said the holdout juror then told her, “But I’m still not going to say she’s not guilty by reason of insanity.”

Two other jurors, Paula Devlin and Kellie Farina, also expressed their frustrations with the holdout juror.

Devlin said the jurors read the judge’s definition of “reasonable doubt” on numerous occasions — but the holdout juror didn’t seem to want to listen.

“He actually said one day in the end, ‘Why don’t we have the judge come and read it again?’ and we were like ‘No, we have it in front of us,’” Devlin said.

“He was very arrogant,” said Farina. “He really did not take anything that anybody said.”

The jurors described explosive arguments during deliberations that included some name-calling. They said the six alternate jurors could hear them and thought they were fighting a lot, but that they were determined to come to a verdict.

The jurors also told NBC 10 that they found the prosecution “harsh,” while Clancy’s attorney, Kevin Reddington, seemed more personable.

They also noted that no one had anything bad to say about Clancy — which informed their decision.

“We weren’t trying to figure out if she murdered the children. She did, and she’s admitting that. We’re trying to figure out: Did she know right from wrong at that time? And with everybody saying she loved her children so much. Everything proved she loved her children,” Carlson said.

She added: “Everything proved that she loved her children, so she had to have snapped.”