A fourth juror from the Lindsay Clancy murder trial has come forward to say she originally wanted to convict the Massachusetts mother, and may still believe Clancy belongs in prison, but changed her vote after "big personalities" in the jury room pushed her toward acquittal.
The unnamed juror told CBS Boston that she entered deliberations believing Clancy was guilty and criminally responsible for strangling her three children, Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months old, with exercise bands inside the family's Massachusetts home in 2023. By the time the jury reported itself deadlocked 11-1, she had switched sides. But the conviction in her gut, she said, never fully went away.
The admission is the latest sign that the jury's near-unanimous vote to acquit Clancy by reason of insanity was far less settled than it appeared, and that the lone holdout juror who refused to fold may have been closer to the room's private doubts than any of the public attacks on him have suggested. The trial ended in a mistrial after Judge William Sullivan declared the panel hopelessly deadlocked at 11-1.
The juror's interview with CBS Boston was striking for its candor. She is the fourth juror to speak publicly since the mistrial, following foreperson Roni Carlson, Kellie Farina, and Paula Devlin, all of whom came forward to condemn the unnamed male holdout who refused to vote not guilty.
But unlike those three, this juror did not portray the holdout as the problem. She defended him.
As she told CBS Boston:
"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 went further, acknowledging the social dynamics that shaped the outcome. The jury of nine women and three men included forceful voices that, by her account, drove the room toward acquittal regardless of where individual jurors privately stood.
"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 move past your convictions."
That word, convictions, cuts both ways. She meant the holdout's refusal to budge. But her own interview makes clear she never fully moved past hers, either. Asked whether she still believes Clancy is guilty, she did not deny it.
"Maybe I still believe that [Clancy is guilty], in a certain way."
The juror described the emotional weight of the trial in visceral terms, singling out the 911 call placed by Lindsay Clancy's husband, Patrick, when he discovered his children's bodies. The audio was played behind closed doors during the trial and has not been released to the public.
"I will never be the same after that 911 call. If these people could have heard that visceral, blood-curdling scream. It was horrifying."
That detail matters. The juror who voted to acquit, who says the prosecution failed to deliver a "smoking gun", still describes the evidence she heard as horrifying. She explained her vote by pointing to what she saw as gaps in the state's case, not by dismissing the gravity of what Clancy did.
"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.' There is too much gray area."
She also expressed sympathy for Clancy's mental state, saying she believed Clancy was "not mentally healthy" and "in the throes of a significant mental crisis." In her view, Clancy "couldn't see her way out, and this was the only option." That framing tracks closely with the insanity defense Clancy's legal team mounted at trial.
Clancy, 36, pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. The case has drawn intense public attention, including scrutiny of juror backgrounds and questions about whether the panel was impartial from the start.
The anonymous juror's defense of the holdout stands in sharp contrast to what foreperson Roni Carlson told NBC Boston days earlier. Carlson said the holdout admitted he had reasonable doubt about Clancy's guilt, the legal standard for acquittal, but still refused to change his vote.
Carlson recalled the holdout saying: "but I'm still not going to say she's not guilty." She described a jury room where shouting during deliberations could allegedly be heard from other rooms inside the courthouse, and where the clash with the holdout began almost immediately.
Carlson also said she had been "so excited" to acquit Clancy before the holdout refused. That level of emotional investment from a foreperson, combined with the anonymous juror's account of "big personalities" driving the room, raises a fair question about whether the pressure ran in one direction only. The holdout stood alone against eleven. The anonymous juror suggests at least some of those eleven were not as certain as they let on.
The trial was already shadowed by a juror intimidation incident that forced the court to confront security concerns during proceedings.
While jurors aired their grievances, Clancy's defense attorney Kevin Reddington took a different tack. Appearing on Good Morning America, Reddington publicly called on President Donald Trump to consider pardoning his client.
"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 "intelligent," "hardworking," and a "wonderful, wonderful person." He referenced Trump having "felt compelled to speak out about this case," though the specific nature of Trump's remarks was not detailed.
Interviewer George Stephanopoulos pressed Reddington about post-trial comments in which the defense attorney boasted that he had "crushed" prosecutor Tim Cruz. Reddington did not fully walk back the remark but conceded he could have chosen his words more carefully.
"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."
Reddington also signaled he is open to negotiating with Cruz to avoid a retrial. He said he has known the district attorney for 30 years and hopes Cruz will "revisit that issue" so both sides can "work something out that will be acceptable." No retrial date has been set, and no deal terms have been disclosed.
The anonymous juror, meanwhile, pushed back against online conspiracy theories accusing Patrick Clancy of murdering his own children and framing Lindsay. She dismissed those claims, though she did not elaborate. The broader pattern of jurors speaking out has kept the case in the national spotlight and raised uncomfortable questions about what actually happened inside that deliberation room.
The picture emerging from these interviews is not one of a jury that carefully weighed the evidence and reached a confident conclusion. It is a picture of a room where dominant voices pushed toward a predetermined outcome, where at least one juror who voted to acquit privately harbored doubts she still carries, and where the lone holdout, publicly vilified by three of his fellow jurors, may have been the only person in the room willing to say out loud what others only admitted afterward.
Cases like this one, and others involving mothers accused of killing their own children, test the justice system's ability to hold people accountable for the worst acts imaginable, even when mental illness is part of the story. Three children are dead. The woman charged with killing them may walk free. And at least one juror who helped make that possible says she is not sure it was the right call.
When a juror votes to acquit and then tells the cameras she maybe still thinks the defendant belongs in prison, the system did not work the way it was supposed to. It bent under pressure, and the people who have to live with the result know it.
