Lindsay Clancy's Holdout Juror Did What Jurors Are Supposed To Do

Lindsay Clancy's Holdout Juror Did What Jurors Are Supposed To Do Just as a holdout may be a bulwark against wrongful conviction, a unanimous verdict is difficult to obtain by design. Who is on trial for the deaths of Cora, Dawson, and Callan Clancy? Technically no one. The trial of Lindsay Clancy—the Massachusetts woman who admitted to killing her children but pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity—ended in a mistrial after a jury deadlocked 11–1, unable to reach a unanimous consensus on whether the 36-year-old mother should be held criminally responsible. Prosecutors have yet to announce if they will retry the case. But that one holdout juror has been filling in the social gap. Michael Desronvil was the lone vote to convict Clancy after days of deliberations. As a result, he is now the one on trial, this time in the court of public opinion. First came the news that the juror—then still anonymous—had been charged with a misdemeanor in 2021 for allegedly assaulting his then-wife; the charge was dropped after the victim said she did not want to testify. We also learned that Desronvil had an active restraining order against him tied to allegations that he attacked his nephew, and that he was facing eviction proceedings. The Boston Globe subsequently revealed his identity "through photos published online, court records, and an interview with one of his fellow jurors." Much of the debate around Desronvil—the ostensible the impetus for the coverage—comes down to the question of whether he lied on his jury form. The short questionnaire asks, among other things, if the prospective juror (or anyone in his household or family) has ever been arrested, charged with a crime, or served a court order. "I don't see how they would've allowed him to be a member of this jury," explained Michael Coyne, the chief legal analyst for NBC10 Boston, which broke the story about Desronvil's history. It is virtually impossible to know if Desronvil lied. The questionnaire is confidential, and, per the Massachusetts government, is "destroyed by the court as soon as practicable after [a juror is] excused." Not everything, though, is a mystery. Notably, we do know that none of the allegations raised above—unsavory as they may be—disqualified him from serving. Under Massachusetts law, someone may not be impaneled on a jury if he "has been convicted of a felony in the last 7 years" or is "currently charged with a felony." Maybe Desronvil should have been convicted of misdemeanor assault. But he wasn't charged, much less convicted, of a felony. So neither applies. Which raises the questions: Why are we doing this? Would anyone be subjecting Desronvil to this interrogation, and publicly picking apart his life, had he voted the other way? And, maybe most importantly, how are the allegations against him supposed to be related to why he voted the way he did? It was clear during the trial that the jurors' debate was a contentious one. The closed-door struggle dragged on for several days, with the jury repeatedly expressing it could not come to an agreement. That intrigue climaxed with a message it sent the judge near the end. "The note indicates that the juror has acknowledged doubt but refuses to apply it," Judge William Sullivan said September 4, addressing Clancy's defense attorney, Kevin Reddington. "That note does not indicate that the juror refuses to follow the law." It's a narrative Desronvil outwardly rejects now that his name is a matter of public record. "I didn't have any doubts," he said in a statement posted to X by his attorney, Edward Andrew Paltzik. "As I tried to explain different possible theories during deliberation, I kept getting cut off as if I had doubts based on the evidence presented. Based on all the physical evidence, key witnesses, and what the prosecution presented, I thought it was enough proof that she (Clancy) knew exactly what she was doing and planned." That view is hardly outside the realm of acceptable debate. The trial hinged on jurors placing themselves in Clancy's mind the day she killed her children. Was she severely depressed but still lucid? Or was she locked in a psychotic episode, unable to understand right from wrong and conform to the law? It was, effectively, an impossible question to answer. People will naturally come to varying conclusions. The Lindsay Clancy Jury Was Tasked With an Impossible Question That Desronvil arrived at a different one than the other jurors does not render his service illegitimate. It is how juries are supposed to work. A holdout who refuses to approve a guilty verdict may be a bulwark against a wrongful conviction. Obtaining a unanimous verdict in a criminal case is, by design, a difficult task. It also helps explain why the American Bar Association recommends, for example, that felons be excluded from juries only if they "are in actual confinement or on probation, parole, or other court supervision"—afterward, the organization says, they should be eligible to serve. Individuals who have had personal contact with the criminal justice system, the counterargument goes, may be too biased against the government to render an impartial verdict. But juries are supposed to represent a true cross section, not just a slice, of the community. Those cross sections can surprise us. Desronvil was accused of a crime, as some are dwelling on, and yet he was the only juror in Lindsay Clancy's trial to side with the state. If you had been on the panel, perhaps you would have voted differently. I may have. And I'd still rather live in a world where jurors do not feel obligated to discard their convictions simply because they are outnumbered.