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By Khaleda Rahman
National Correspondent
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A lone male juror blocked Lindsay Clancy from being acquitted despite admitting he had reasonable doubt, the jury’s foreperson revealed in a television interview on Tuesday.
Three jurors from Clancy’s murder trial spoke publicly for the first time in an interview aired on Boston's NBC10, days after a judge declared a mistrial when jurors said they were unable to reach a unanimous verdict on whether Clancy was criminally responsible for killing her three young children in 2023.
Clancy, 36, a former labor and delivery nurse, did not dispute that she killed her children, 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson and 8-month-old Callan Clancy. But she pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity and her defense team argued that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis at the time of the killings.
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Prosecutors argued that she knew what she was doing and acted deliberately when she killed the children in January 2023.
Jurors did not disclose their final vote in court, but notes discussed during the proceedings suggested the panel was divided 11-1 in favor of acquittal before the mistrial was declared.
Judge William Sullivan ordered the names of the jurors be sealed for at least 14 days. The holdout juror has not yet come forward to reveal his identity or given an interview.
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What We Know About Holdout Juror
The holdout juror has not been identified. But he was one of three men on the jury in Clancy's trial. The panel featured nine women.
On Friday, juror Paula Devlin revealed in an interview with CBS Mornings that he is a Black man and that he was the only person on the jury who was not white.
That juror survived an attempt by Clancy's defense to remove him from the panel last week.
Clancy's attorney Kevin Reddington told the judge that the juror "refuses to listen to the law you have given him or her on reasonable doubt." But the judge declined to remove him, saying it was not appropriate for him to rule one way or another. "I don’t feel it’s appropriate for me to say I agree with one juror or 11," Sullivan said.
How One Juror Changed Everything
Clancy's trial ended in a mistrial after jurors failed to reach a unanimous verdict after seven days of deliberations following five weeks of testimony.
During the deliberations, the jury sent Sullivan three notes saying they were unable to agree on whether Clancy was criminally responsible for killing her three children. The jury's foreperson also sent a note to the judge complaining that one juror was refusing to listen to the law on reasonable doubt.
The foreperson, identified as Ronni Carlson, and other jurors have since said that much of the deliberations had focused on trying to convince the lone juror who wanted a conviction to vote for an acquittal.
As the juror continued to hold out, Clancy's defense team filed an emergency appeal with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on Friday asking the higher court to order the trial court to further question the holdout juror or remove him from the jury. In their filing, they argued that the juror had been identified by the jury's foreperson as "biased" and was "refusing to follow the court's instructions on reasonable doubt." It also argued that the juror's reasoning reflected a possible bias against those dealing with mental illness.
Ultimately, the High Court denied the appeal and a mistrial was formally declared on Friday afternoon.
Neama Rahman, a former federal prosecutor and the president of the law firm West Coast Trial Lawyers, told Newsweek that while he was not surprised that the jury deadlocked, the fact that it was due to a single holdout was unusual.
"It takes significant willpower to stand against 11 others for more than a week, and many others would have folded," he said.
"I'm not surprised the majority was frustrated with the lone male holdout jury, especially if he acknowledged reasonable doubt and the state not meeting its burden. Unfortunately as long as the jurors say they can follow the law, there is nothing trial or appellate judges can do if they misapply it."
He called the trial "one of the most polarizing and divisive" in recent memory.
"The facts aren't really in dispute. And when reasonable people can view the same facts differently, that's reasonable doubt," he said.
What Other Jurors Said About the Holdout
In the interview with NBC10, three jurors described the holdout juror as unwilling to listen to the rest of the group.
Carlson said that at one point during the deliberations, she thought that he had agreed to vote for an acquittal.
"He admitted he had reasonable doubt. I started filling out the forms, I was so excited," Carlson told NBC10. "There were three forms I had to fill out, and I started filling them out. I wrote my signature on each one. And then he said 'But I’m still not going to say that she’s not guilty by reason of insanity.’"
Carlson added that he was not able to "articulate anything" and "was very closed off."
Devlin described that holdout juror as "very arrogant."
"He really did not take anything that anybody said," she told NBC10. She added that the jury contained several nurses, but the holdout juror would not listen to them.
A third juror, Kellie Farina, said the holdout juror stayed on Clancy killing her children, even as other jurors focused on the legal question of criminal responsibility.
"He had the hardest time getting off the fact that Lindsay viciously killed her children," she said.
Another woman who served on the jury but asked to remain anonymous said in an interview with CBS Boston that from the very start of the deliberations, the majority of jurors were trying to sway the holdout juror.
She said that most jurors were "very firm in their stance" from the very start of the deliberations.
"The standalone juror was not the only one that was unwilling to see things from the other side," she said.
"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, I feel like it just came down to an inability to kind of move past your convictions."
But that juror said she agreed with the note that the jury’s foreperson sent the judge complaining that one juror would not follow the court’s instructions about reasonable doubt.
"Because 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," she said.
On Thursday, a male juror spoke out for the first time about his frustrations with the lone holdout.
In interview with Good Morning America that aired on Thursday, Nick Dargie said the holdout juror did not present evidence or explain his vote.
“It was definitely frustrating, mainly frustrating when he explicitly said, ‘You know, I don’t know if the prosecution or the defense proved their case,’” Dargie said.
He said that once the jurors "laid out all of the evidence and how we saw it, that really brought everyone kind of on the same page, except for this one juror.”
Dargie said he had asked the juror to show evidence that “helped to prove what he was saying, but he couldn’t." That prompted the foreperson to send the note to the judge, he said.
He said there were times when the holdout juror would not engage in discussions with others on the jury, scrolling on his phone when others were trying to speak with him.
Dargie also said at one point he had confronted the holdout juror after he mimicked the killings with the exercise band that was used to strangle the children.
"He took the exercise band out of the [evidence] bag, grabbed an empty water bottle and tied the band around the water bottle and pulled it," he said.
“I was shocked. It didn’t make any sense to me,” Dargie added. “I asked him, why are you doing that?… It's disgusting."
What Did Clancy's Attorney Say?
After the mistrial was declared, Clancy’s attorney, Kevin Reddington, said he believed his client would have been acquitted if not for one juror.
Jurors "know they were robbed by one man, for whatever his agenda was, who stole seven weeks of the life of these other jurors that were so attentive, so beautiful, so wonderful," he said on Friday.
Prior to the mistrial, Reddington had accused the juror of lying in a heated exchange in a court.
The juror had "made statements acknowledging doubt but refuses to apply it to the verdict as the law states," he said.
"It clearly and unequivocally indicates that they are basically 11 to 1, and this person will not apply reasonable doubt to the evidence to return a not-guilty verdict."
Will the Mysterious Juror Be Revealed?
In an order on Friday, Sullivan ordered the identities of all 12 jurors to be sealed for at least 14 days, citing concerns about safety of jurors given the significant national attention that the case has attracted.
"This Court acknowledges that the names of empaneled jurors who rendered a verdict in a criminal case must be retained in the court file and made available to the public," the judge wrote.
"In order to overcome the public right of access to judicial records, there must be a showing of good cause."
He noted that there have been "a significant number of posts in various social media platforms that have raised issues regarding various reactions to a verdict in this case" and that a woman had recently been arrested and charged with recording jurors as they left court. As a result, he ordered that the names of the jurors be sealed for 14 days.
However, the order says jurors are free to identify themselves and speak publicly about the case if they choose to.
Therefore, the holdout juror could come forward and give his account of what happened during deliberations before the order expires. If not, the names of all 12 jurors will become public after the sealing period expires, unless the judge extends the order.
Poll Shows What Americans Think
A YouGov survey conducted among 23,554 U.S. adults on Thursday found a majority (67 percent) said that they would stick with their position if they were the sole juror who disagreed with other jurors about a verdict. Five percent said they would change their position to agree with other jurors, while 28 percent said they were not sure.
The survey also found that more Americans (46 percent) said that based on what they knew about the case, the more appropriate verdict in the case would be guilty of murder. Some 21 percent said they think the more appropriate verdict would be not guilty by reason of insanity, while 33 percent said they were not sure.
More than half of male respondents (51 percent) said the more appropriate verdict was guilty of murder, while 15 percent said the not guilty verdict was more appropriate and 34 percent were unsure.
Of the female respondents, 41 percent said the more appropriate verdict was guilty of murder, while 26 percent said the more appropriate verdict was not guilty by reason of insanity. A third of women (33 percent) were unsure.
What Happens Next
Meanwhile, Friday’s mistrial leaves the case unresolved. Clancy remains charged with murder and is expected to stay at a psychiatric hospital until her case is resolved.
Clancy could face another trial, but the prosecutor who charged her said a decision about that would be made at a later date.
"I'm going to be meeting with our team, and we will address this case further at the appropriate time," Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz told reporters.
Reddington has previously said he hopes to reach an agreement with Cruz rather than go through another trial.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Ben Kelly and Robert Greenall
Update, 09/09/2026 11:50 a.m. ET: this article was updated with more information.
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