Lindsay Clancy juror speaks after mistrial: "There was so much doubt"
A woman who served as a juror in Lindsay Clancy's high-profile Massachusetts murder trial provided a look at deliberations, saying there was too much doubt for her to reach a guilty verdict.
Clancy's murder trial ended in a mistrial on Friday due to a hung jury. According to a note sent to the judge by the foreperson, there was an 11-1 split among jurors.
A woman who was juror No. 5 spoke to WBZ-TV's Kristina Rex, though she asked to remain anonymous.
"At the end of the day, there was so much doubt," the woman said. "The prosecution didn't have a figurative smoking gun. There was not a single moment throughout the presentation of that case where you could say 'Yup, 100% I'm certain she did it' or that she didn't do it. There was too much gray area."
Lindsay Clancy juror interview
The juror said that from the start of deliberations, the majority of the room was trying to sway the lone holdout.
"The majority of people, it doesn't matter what side they were on, were very firm in their stance and their belief from the beginning," she said. "The stand-alone 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 in a sense. There were some big personalities in that room. But at the end of the day, it just came down to an inability to move past your convictions."
The juror who spoke to WBZ-TV said at first, she believed Clancy should be found guilty and was criminally responsible for the deaths of her three children.
"And maybe I still believe that in a certain way. I think that this is a woman who was not mentally healthy. She was someone who was in the throes of a significant mental health crisis," the juror said. "I really just felt like she was so deep in it that she couldn't see her way out."
Juror will "never be the same" after hearing 911 call
Clancy's attorney attempted to have the holdout juror thrown off the jury because he argued they were refusing to apply the instruction of the law to reasonable doubt.
"At the end of the day, to not follow that reasonable doubt and to acknowledge that it's there, you morally and legally cannot convict somebody for that. And that was therefore a violation of her constitutional rights," the juror said. "Essentially, that is what we were there as a jury to do is to uphold that Constitution and give someone a fair trial of their peers. And I don't necessarily think she was getting that with that juror. It's not simply because of the fact that he had an opposing view or this person felt like she was guilty. It was the inability to back that up with any logic."
When it came to sitting on such a high-profile case, juror No. 5 said there were moments of devastating testimony. Particularly, she said hearing the 911 call from Patrick Clancy, Lindsay's now ex-husband, was something she will never forget. The call was played in the courtroom, but not broadcast during the trial.
"I will never be the same after that 911 call," she said. "After the trial, I saw all the conspiracy theories about how Patrick did and that he somehow convinced Lindsay that she had done it when it was really him. All I could think was that if these people could have heard that visceral, blood-curdling scream, I don't think I could name a single actor or actress that could have performed that the way he did. I will never be the same after that. It was horrifying. Just to imagine living through that and being the person to find your children in that scenario, it shakes you."
Prosecutors have not yet said if they will retry the case a second time after the mistrial.
