A fourth juror from the Lindsay Clancy murder trial has come forward to admit she changed her vote during deliberations after pressure from "big personalities", and that she may still believe Clancy is guilty.
The anonymous juror, identified only as Juror No. 5, told CBS Boston that she walked into the jury room believing the 36-year-old Massachusetts mother was criminally responsible for strangling her three children with exercise bands in 2023. She walked out having voted to acquit. But even now, she cannot say with certainty that she made the right call.
"Maybe I still believe that, in a certain way," she said of Clancy's guilt. The admission is the most striking to emerge from what has become a remarkable, and troubling, public unraveling of jury deliberations in one of the most closely watched murder cases in the country.
Lindsay Clancy does not dispute that she killed her children, five-year-old Cora, three-year-old Dawson, and eight-month-old Callan, inside her Duxbury, Massachusetts, home on January 24, 2023. She pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, arguing she was in the grip of postpartum psychosis when she used exercise resistance bands to strangle them. The jury of nine women and three men deadlocked after failing to reach a unanimous verdict, splitting 11, 1 in favor of acquittal. Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial.
Since then, four jurors have gone public. Three, foreperson Roni Carlson, Kellie Farina, and Paula Devlin, came forward to condemn the lone male holdout who refused to vote not guilty. The fourth, the anonymous Juror No. 5, offered something different: a defense of the holdout, and a window into how group dynamics inside the jury room may have shaped the outcome more than the evidence did.
That distinction matters. In a case where three children are dead and the defendant faces retrial, the integrity of the deliberation process is not a minor question. And the mistrial itself already raised serious concerns about whether the jury functioned as it should.
"Originally, I felt that she was guilty and she was criminally responsible for it," the juror told CBS Boston. She described herself as the "perfect juror", someone who entered deliberations with an open mind but leaning toward conviction.
What changed her mind, she said, was not a single decisive piece of evidence. It was the absence of one.
"There was not a single moment throughout that presentation of that case that you could say, 'Oh yep, 100 percent I'm certain she did it.'"
She added: "There is too much gray area." She said she came to believe Clancy "was not mentally healthy" and "was in the throes of a significant mental crisis," ultimately concluding that Clancy saw killing her children as "the only option."
But "too much gray area" is not the same as certainty that the defendant was insane. And the juror's own words suggest she knows it. She never said she was convinced Clancy was not criminally responsible. She said the prosecution failed to produce a "smoking gun." That is a different claim, one about the strength of the state's presentation, not about the facts of the case.
The most revealing part of the juror's account was her description of how the deliberation room operated. She acknowledged that "big personalities" shaped the dynamic and that the holdout juror "was not the only one that was unwilling to see things from the other side."
That second point directly contradicts the narrative pushed by foreperson Carlson and the other jurors who went public. They framed the holdout as a lone obstacle, stubborn, closed-minded, and impossible to reason with. Carlson, speaking to NBC Boston, claimed the holdout "admitted he had reasonable doubt" about Clancy's guilt by reason of insanity but still refused to vote for acquittal. She recalled him saying: "but I'm still not going to say she's not guilty."
Carlson also said she was "so excited" to acquit Clancy, a statement that, for the foreperson of a triple-murder jury, raises its own questions about impartiality.
Juror No. 5, by contrast, defended the holdout. "This standalone 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," she said. Her account suggests the real story of those deliberations is not one stubborn man against eleven reasonable women. It is a room where strong voices pushed wavering jurors toward a verdict some of them were not fully comfortable with.
Shouting during deliberations could reportedly be heard from other rooms in the courthouse. The jury deliberated for seven days before the mistrial was declared. Defense attorney Kevin Reddington tried multiple last-minute maneuvers to avoid that outcome, including asking the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court for an emergency stay and requesting that the holdout juror be removed. Both efforts failed.
Adding another layer to the deliberation concerns, jurors have disclosed that nurses on the panel used their own clinical expertise to interpret toxicology evidence from South Shore Hospital. Rather than relying solely on the expert testimony presented at trial, these jurors drew on their professional backgrounds to evaluate the medical record.
Whether that constitutes jurors properly applying their life experience or improperly introducing outside knowledge into the deliberation room is a question legal observers will debate. But it underscores how far the process drifted from the standard model of twelve citizens weighing only the evidence presented in court. Jurors also rejected the holdout's request to have the judge re-read the reasonable doubt instruction, telling him they already had it in front of them.
That refusal is notable. The holdout wanted the jury to revisit the legal standard they were supposed to apply. The majority said no.
While jurors aired their grievances on local television, defense attorney Kevin Reddington took the case national. Appearing on Good Morning America, he appealed directly to President Donald Trump.
"Mr. President, I hope that you would consider this young lady, the type of person she is, what she's been through, and consider a pardon."
Reddington described Clancy as a "wonderful, wonderful person" and said he feels "a very strong bond" with her. He also addressed his earlier remark that he had "crushed" the prosecution, offering a partial walk-back: "I think I perhaps could have been a little more circumspect dealing with Tim Cruz, and instead of saying I crushed him, I could have said I did a good job."
At the same time, Reddington signaled he is open to negotiating a plea deal with District Attorney Tim Cruz to avoid a retrial. "I've known Tim for 30 years," he said. "I hope, however, after this trial, that he would revisit that issue and we could work something out that will be acceptable for both sides." Whether Cruz is interested in such a deal remains unknown. Reddington's conduct throughout the trial has drawn criticism from legal commentators who questioned his courtroom demeanor.
Reddington argued during the trial that the holdout juror's reasoning "reflects a bias against those who suffer from debilitating mental illness, a protected category", a claim the court did not accept.
Whatever doubts Juror No. 5 carries about her final vote, one piece of evidence left no ambiguity in her mind. The 911 call placed by Patrick Clancy, Lindsay Clancy's husband, when he discovered the bodies of his three children was played behind closed doors in the courtroom. It has not been released to the public.
"I will never be the same after that 911 call," the juror said. "If these people could have heard that visceral, blood-curdling scream. It was horrifying."
Patrick Clancy has also been the target of conspiracy theories accusing him of murdering his own children and framing his wife, claims that have circulated without evidence. The trial was further complicated by a juror intimidation incident that forced the court to confront a security breach during proceedings.
Clancy remains in a psychiatric facility pending a likely retrial. No date for that retrial has been announced. The New York Post reported that Juror No. 5 ultimately concluded the only way to get "justice for Cora, Dawson and Callan" was to ensure Clancy received mental health treatment, "and there's no way she's getting that help in prison."
The public statements from these four jurors paint a fractured picture. Three of them went on television to blame one man for the mistrial. The fourth went on television to say those three were not telling the whole story, and that she herself is not sure she voted the right way.
Judge Sullivan, in declaring the mistrial, told the jury: "You should be proud for what you did. You braced for that duty; you performed that duty." That was a gracious thing to say to twelve people who had spent seven days locked in a room with a case no one would want to carry home.
But pride and duty are not the same as getting it right. Three children are dead. The woman who killed them may go free, may take a plea, or may face another jury. And at least one of the people who voted to acquit her is not sure she should have.
When a juror admits she changed her vote because of "big personalities" and still thinks the defendant might belong in prison, the system did not work the way it was supposed to. That is not justice, for the defendant, for the victims, or for a public asked to trust the process.
