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By Hannah Parry
Associate News Editor
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A fourth juror from Lindsay Clancy's murder trial has spoken publicly about the jury's bitter deliberations, revealing that she initially believed Clancy was guilty and criminally responsible for killing her three children before changing her position because she felt there was too much reasonable doubt.
The new account comes as Clancy's attorney, Kevin Reddington, prepares to ask a judge to throw out the case on double-jeopardy grounds, arguing that there was no "manifest necessity" for the mistrial that ended the trial last week.
Juror No. 5, who spoke anonymously to CBS Boston, said she entered deliberations believing Clancy should be found guilty and criminally responsible. But after considering the evidence, she said she became convinced prosecutors had not established the case beyond a reasonable doubt.
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"At the end of the day, there was so much doubt," she told the station. "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."
The jury ultimately deadlocked 11-1, leading Judge William Sullivan to declare a mistrial on September 4 after more than seven days of deliberations.
Reddington now says he will file a motion to dismiss the case at a previously scheduled September 29 hearing. He said the motion will argue that a retrial should be barred under the constitutional protection against double jeopardy.
"It will be a motion to dismiss based on what's called double jeopardy grounds, because there's no ... manifest necessity," Reddington told CBS Mornings.
Under the legal principle Reddington is invoking, a mistrial caused by a genuinely deadlocked jury can generally permit a retrial. His argument is that the circumstances surrounding this mistrial did not meet that standard because the judge could have taken additional steps concerning the lone holdout juror.
Newsweek has reached out to defense attorney Kevin Reddington for comment. Judges are unable to comment on cases they are connected to under Massachusetts law.
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Five Biggest Bombshells From the Clancy Jurors
Juror Five Says She Changed Her Mind
Juror No. 5 said she initially believed Clancy was criminally responsible for the deaths of her children, Cora, Dawson and Callan.
"And maybe I still believe that in a certain way," she said. "I think that this is a woman who was not mentally healthy. She was someone that was in the throes of a significant mental health crisis."
But after weighing the evidence, she said she could no longer reach the level of certainty required for a guilty verdict.
"There was too much gray area," she said.
Ultimately, she said she came to believe that getting Clancy psychiatric treatment was the appropriate outcome.
"I just felt like the only way to get justice for Cora, Dawson and Callan. And Patrick and her parents and everyone else that was closest was to get her to help that she desperately needed," she said. "And there's no way she's getting that help in a prison."
Clancy's defense argued that she was suffering from severe postpartum psychosis when she killed her children and therefore was not criminally responsible. Prosecutors argued that she planned the killings and understood what she was doing.
Majority Tried To Sway Holdout
Juror No. 5 also offered a somewhat different characterization of the jury room from the accounts given by three other jurors who spoke publicly after the mistrial.
She said the majority of jurors were attempting to persuade the lone holdout from the beginning of deliberations.
"The majority of the people, it doesn't matter what side they were on, were very firm in their stance and their belief from the beginning," she said.
But she also pushed back against the idea that the holdout was uniquely unwilling to reconsider his position.
"The stand-alone juror was not the only one that was unwilling to see things from the other side," she said.
She described the deliberations as involving "big personalities" and said the dispute ultimately came down to an "inability to move past your convictions."
That account is notable because three other jurors who spoke publicly previously portrayed the holdout as the central obstacle to a verdict.
Holdout Reportedly Admitted He Had Reasonable Doubt
The most significant revelation came from the foreperson. She said the holdout eventually acknowledged that he had reasonable doubt about the case. Believing a verdict was finally within reach, she said she began filling out the verdict forms.
"He admitted he had reasonable doubt and I started filling out the forms, I was so excited," she told NBC10 Boston.
But, according to the foreperson, the juror then refused to agree to a not-guilty-by-reason-of-insanity verdict.
"But I'm still not going to say that she's not guilty by reason of insanity," she said he told the group.
According to the foreperson's account, the majority of the panel favored finding Clancy not guilty by reason of insanity. The holdout's refusal to join them ultimately prevented a unanimous verdict.
The revelation is significant because it appears to explain why the 11-1 split did not simply result in an acquittal. The jury was deciding not only whether Clancy committed the killings, but whether she was criminally responsible for them.
Deliberations Became So Heated That Alternate Jurors Could Hear Them
The disagreements inside the jury room were not merely quiet differences of opinion. The three jurors said the arguments became so intense that the six alternate jurors could hear them and thought the panel was fighting.
Despite the conflict, the jurors said they were determined to keep deliberating and reach a verdict.
The tension eventually spilled into the courtroom, where the defense sought to have the holdout removed after the foreperson raised concerns about his approach to reasonable doubt. Judge Sullivan declined to replace him.
That account adds context to the extraordinary events that unfolded in court as the jury repeatedly reported that it could not reach a unanimous decision.
Foreperson Raised Concerns About The Holdout with the Judge
The foreperson was also the juror who wrote a note to Judge William Sullivan expressing concerns about the holdout during deliberations.
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The note became central to the dispute between the defense and the court.
Reddington asked Sullivan to remove the juror, arguing that the note indicated "there's one juror who refuses to listen to the law that you've given him or her on reasonable doubt."
Sullivan declined, saying he could not take sides between the juror and the other 11 members of the panel.
"I don't feel it's appropriate for me to say I agree with one juror or the [other] 11," Sullivan said.
The judge also instructed the jurors to keep deliberating and reconsider their positions without abandoning their convictions just to reach a verdict.
Jurors Say Holdout Struggled to Separate the Killings From the Insanity Question
One of the jurors said the holdout repeatedly returned to the fact that Clancy had killed her children, even as the other jurors tried to focus on the legal question of criminal responsibility.
She said: "He had the hardest time getting off the fact that Lindsay viciously killed her children."
That is potentially one of the most revealing comments because it gets to the heart of the defense's argument. The question before the jury was not whether Clancy killed her children—the defense acknowledged that—but whether her mental state meant she should be found not criminally responsible.
Jurors say Prosecution's Portrayal of Clancy Affected Their View of the Case
The jurors offered criticism of the prosecution's presentation, with one saying she found it "harsh" and another questioning why prosecutors had not presented character witnesses concerning whether Clancy had been a bad mother.
"I just found it to be harsh—very, very harsh," one juror said, according to NBC10 Boston. "The fact that they had no character witnesses in regards to Lindsay being a bad mother ... I found it to be biased," another said.
The foreperson went further, saying the evidence showed Clancy loved her children.
"All of the witnesses and evidence proved that she loved her children," she said, according to the report. "So she had to have snapped."
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Those comments provide an important insight into why the defense's postpartum psychosis argument resonated with at least some members of the jury.
For now, however, there is no verdict. Prosecutors have not announced whether they will retry Clancy, and the holdout juror has not publicly responded to the allegations made by his fellow jurors.
The new accounts nevertheless provide the clearest picture yet of how a jury that reportedly stood 11-1 in Clancy's favor failed to reach a unanimous decision—and why the dispute over one juror ultimately became central to the mistrial.
What Did Lindsay Clancy Do?
Clancy admitted to killing her children, Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months old, at the family's Massachusetts home in January 2023, but her defense argued that she was not criminally responsible because she was experiencing severe postpartum psychosis.
Prosecutors disputed that account, arguing that Clancy had planned the killings and understood what she was doing. The defense, meanwhile, presented evidence that Clancy had experienced a serious deterioration in her mental health before the deaths, including auditory hallucinations and suicidal thoughts.
After killing her children, Clancy attempted to take her own life by jumping from a second-story window. She survived but was left paralyzed.
The case ultimately came down to whether Clancy should be held criminally responsible for the killings. After more than 38 hours of deliberations, the jury could not reach the unanimous verdict required for a criminal conviction or acquittal.
Who Was the Holdout Juror in Clancy Trial?
The identity of the lone holdout juror has not been publicly disclosed in the reports about the jurors' interview.
The jury was made up of nine women and three men, and the panel repeatedly told the judge it was divided 11-1. The three jurors described the holdout as unwilling to listen to the rest of the panel and said their disagreements became increasingly heated during deliberations.
The holdout has not publicly responded to the other jurors' characterization of their conduct.
That distinction is important. The jurors' comments provide an inside account of the deliberations, but they do not establish as a matter of law that the holdout violated the judge's instructions or misunderstood the legal standard.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Samantha Beech and Gray R. Thomas
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