The “holdout juror” in the Lindsay Clancy case has spoken publicly for the first time, saying he did not have any doubts about her culpability in the murders of her three children.
Michael Desronvil, 48, refused to join the other 11 jurors in voting “not guilty” during the Lindsay Clancy trial, triggering a declaration of a mistrial on September 4. In the days after the trial ended, some of the other jurors appeared on national and local media, criticising Desronvil for refusing to join them in the verdict.
Juror Paula Devlin described the holdout juror as “arrogant” and told Boston’s NBC10 that “he really did not take anything that anybody said”.
In a statement provided to NewsNation on Thursday, September 17, Desronvil disputed this characterisation of events. Desronvil is an immigrant from Haiti who moved to the United States as a child and his family described him as being devoutly Catholic.
“I didn’t have any doubts,” Desronvil said.
He continued: “As I tried to explain different possible theories during deliberation, I kept getting cut off as if I had doubts based on the evidence present. Based on all the physical evidence, key witnesses, and what the prosecution presents, I thought it was proof enough that she (Clancy) knew exactly what she was doing and planned.”
Clancy, 36, was found by her then-husband, Patrick, bleeding and semi-conscious outside her home in Duxbury, Massachusetts, on January 24, 2023. She had slit her wrists and neck and jumped out of her bedroom window, sustaining a spinal cord injury, in an attempt to kill herself. Lindsay Clancy is now paralysed from the waist down.
While on the phone with emergency services, Patrick Clancy discovered his three children – Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, 8 months – unresponsive in their basement. Lindsay Clancy had strangled them with exercise bands while she had sent her husband out on an errand.
Cora and Dawson Clancy could not be revived, and Callan died three days later. Neither she nor her lawyer disputed the fact that she was the one who killed her three children. The trial centred on whether she was criminally responsible for their deaths, with her defence arguing that she was experiencing psychosis at the time.
Lindsay Clancy was charged with three counts of first-degree murder and three counts of strangulation, to which she pleaded not guilty. She alleges she was in a state of psychosis during the crimes.
Since Desronvil’s identity was published by the Boston Globe, his family has been harassed, his brother told the New York Post. He claimed that his “family cannot leave the house” and that people are “leaving notes at my mother’s house. They won’t leave us alone and we don’t know anything”.
A fundraiser on the website GiveSendGo, titled “Support the Juror”, has raised nearly $300,000 as of September 18. The fundraiser praised the juror for refusing to vote “not guilty” and for refusing to cave to the pressure of his fellow jurors.
“If they come for him, and they will, this is to cover security, lawyers, and lost work,” says the fundraiser’s description.
