Lindsay Clancy juror says holdout ‘admitted he had reasonable doubt’

By Nicki Brown, Cindy Von Quednow, CNN

(CNN) — Three jurors in Lindsay Clancy’s triple-murder trial suggested in an exclusive interview with NBC10 Boston that the panel was leaning toward finding the Massachusetts mother not guilty by lack of criminal responsibility, but a single male juror prevented the panel from reaching a verdict – even after he “admitted he had reasonable doubt.”

“He admitted he had reasonable doubt, and I started filling out the forms, I was so excited,” the jury’s foreperson Roni Carlson told NBC10’s Sue O’Connell in an interview alongside two other female jurors. “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.’”

The weekslong trial ended in a mistrial Friday, after the panel – comprised of nine women and three men – spent more than 38 hours trying to reach a unanimous verdict in the complicated and highly divisive case. The jurors sent notes to the court indicating they were split 11 to 1, with the majority at one point alleging the lone holdout was unable to follow the law on reasonable doubt. The judge ultimately declared a mistrial.

Clancy, 36, admitted she fatally strangled her three children in the basement of the family’s Duxbury, Massachusetts, home in January 2023. But her attorney argued she should not be held criminally responsible for the killings because she was suffering from postpartum psychosis and extreme mental illness when she killed her children and then attempted suicide.

Carlson said there was no doubt Clancy killed her children, but it was also obvious to jurors that she loved them.

“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,” Carlson said. “Everything proved that she loved her children so she had to have snapped,” she said, citing Clancy’s journals and the testimony of her mother-in-law.

NBC10 Boston reported it tried to reach the holdout juror for comment.

“He had the hardest time getting off the fact that Lindsay viciously killed her children,” Kellie Farina said of the holdout, describing how the panel repeatedly pointed him to the judge’s instructions on reasonable doubt.

“Every one of us in the hours of our frustration would get up and walk the room, because you just couldn’t sit anymore,” she said.

The third juror told O’Connell the holdout juror disregarded certain information some of his fellow panelists – nurses among them – provided about Clancy’s toxicology report.

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

Farina said the audio of the 911 call – which was not broadcast beyond the courtroom – made by Clancy’s husband Patrick is something she will not forget.

“It was the most horrific thing, and when we heard it again in the jury room, we were crying again. We were just like, ‘my God, the desperation, the despair in his voice,’” she said, adding that when the audio was replayed, some jurors put in headphones to not have to listen to it again.

“It’s something (that) will stick with me,” Farina said.

This story has been updated with additional information.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.