The lone juror who blocked a unanimous decision in the Lindsay Clancy trial spent much of the jury room stressing the need for “respect” among panel members and repeatedly zeroed in on the blood found in the bedroom where she killed her three young children, one fellow juror has said.
Speaking to Our News Outlet, Paula Devlin, 65, described the frustration inside the deliberation room after 11 jurors concluded Clancy should be found not guilty of murder or manslaughter in the deaths of her children, only for the case to end in a mistrial because one male juror would not agree to acquit the former nurse.
Devlin, who works for a government contractor, said the unidentified holdout juror offered reasoning that “made no sense” when others asked him to explain his position. She added that he remained largely subdued through the week of deliberations.
According to Devlin, the married juror also kept mostly to himself during the trial, choosing to spend breaks talking with his wife or watching videos on his phone rather than mixing with the rest of the panel.
Once deliberations began, Devlin said, he appeared more concerned with correcting the way jurors spoke to one another than with laying out a clear argument for why he believed Clancy was guilty.
“What bothered him most was that, at times, several of us would try to speak at the same time, and that really seemed to upset him,” she said.
“He would become agitated and tell everyone, ‘Listen to what she’s saying, listen to what he’s saying, be respectful,’” Devlin recalled.
“We tried to explain that in ordinary conversation, people sometimes lose their train of thought or struggle to find the right word, and someone else may jump in to help complete the idea. That’s just how people talk,” she said.
‘But when that would happen, he would get upset and just take all this time lecturing us about not being respectful.’
Paula Devlin, 65, told Our News Outlet how the holdout juror in the Lindsay Clancy trial lectured his peers about ‘respect’ and focused on the amount of blood found in the bedroom
Eleven of the 12 jurors reportedly wanted to find Clancy, 36, not guilty of murder or manslaughter but a mistrial was declared after a lone male juror refused to acquit her
But she said the holdout was less forthcoming about his refusal to acquit Clancy.
‘We asked the lone juror, what are the things that are making you think that she’s guilty, and we asked him, and he didn’t want to write on the board.
‘He didn’t say a word, and so one of the jurors jumped up and said, ‘I’ll write for you,’ and then he said the things that he said, and then we talked about each one of those things.’
Devlin revealed one of the man’s concerns centered on the amount of blood found in the bedroom of the Clancys’ upmarket home in the suburb of Duxbury, Boston, shortly after Lindsay used exercise bands to kill her three children – Cora, five; Dawson, three; and Callan, eight months.
On January 24, 2023, Clancy’s now ex-husband Patrick, 36, a software sales employee for Microsoft, had gone out at her request to pick up their kids’ medicine and takeout for the family.
He returned less than an hour later at around 6pm and went upstairs to find his wife.
But when he got upstairs, he found their second-floor bedroom door locked.
After forcing his way in, he discovered blood on the floor, a bloody knife on the nightstand and a wide-open window.
Clancy has not denied that she killed her three children, but argued she should be found not guilty by reason of insanity as she was suffering from postpartum psychosis at the time
Cora, five; Dawson, three; and Callan, eight months, were found strangled to death at their home in Duxbury, Massachusetts on January 24, 2023
He ran downstairs to find Clancy on the ground outside, with her wrists and neck cut. She told him she’d tried to kill herself and revealed that their children were in the basement.
Her suicide attempt failed but left Clancy paralyzed and permanently confined to a wheelchair.
‘He [the holdout juror] thought there was too much blood in the bedroom,’ revealed Devlin.
‘We had lots of testimony around the blood. We had a blood expert that was very compelling and she was really good at how she described it to us.
‘He said that he thought there was too much blood for the wounds that she had.
‘We all asked him what he meant by that, because we heard experts talk about the blood spatter and explain to us how it all was what it was supposed to be.’
But when quizzed by his fellow jurors, the lone holdout refused to elaborate or reveal how it linked to why he wouldn’t acquit the former labor and delivery nurse, Devlin said.
‘I feel that he didn’t make any sense. I feel like if he could have pointed to one specific thing to show us, to back up what he was thinking or why he was thinking it, then all of us would have a different feeling.
‘We never would have sent the information to the judge that we did, because that’s part of the process. It’s okay to disagree.’
Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial last week after the jury failed to reach a consensus
Defense attorney Kevin Reddington is pictured reacting to the judge’s decision to declare a mistrial
But she insisted: ‘I absolutely believe he [the holdout] did not follow the law when it came to reasonable doubt.
‘If you say you have doubt, then you have to follow the law. And if you don’t follow the law, that’s not right.
‘Can I say whether he understood that or not? I don’t know, because we didn’t have him explain it back to us.’
Jurors spent more than 37 hours deliberating five-and-a-half weeks of highly complex and distressing evidence.
But judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial at Plymouth Superior Court last Friday afternoon after the holdout refused to side with the other 11 twice, late Thursday and early Friday.
Devlin added: ‘I don’t want to bash anybody, even that person.
‘They did whatever they did for their reasons, and we will never know, and we will never understand.
‘That’s what hurts so much.’
Devlin told of the tense moments in the jury room during the trial, which would hit a crescendo during deliberations.
Devlin told Our News Outlet how she felt the one holdout juror ‘didn’t make any sense’
‘There were days when we were absolutely quiet, where nobody said a word, because we had a lot of emotion in that room, and we had to say out loud that we needed to give ourselves a timeout.
‘Most everybody got along really well the majority of the time.’
She said during the more heated discussions, ‘there was a lot of emotion and a lot of opinions’.
‘One of the jurors did an interview and said there were strong personalities. I think I was one of those strong personalities.
‘I think we got loud sometimes because we all were trying to get our point across before we settled in during deliberations.’
She revealed the most hotly debated pieces of evidence amongst the jurors were Patrick Clancy’s harrowing 911 call, the evidence over how his wife went out their bedroom window and the medications she was on.
‘I will never forget the sounds that Patrick made when he found his children’, added Devlin.
Devlin, a mother herself, said watching Lindsay Clancy during the trial, she was struck by how many people loved her and how deeply she loved her children
Devlin, a mother herself, said watching Lindsay Clancy during the trial, she was struck by how many people loved her and how deeply she loved her children.
‘I think we all expected the prosecution to bring people onto the stand that were gonna say negative things about her and they never did.
‘I don’t think I’ll ever forget the tone in the prosecutor’s voice talking to Patrick, trying not to be too forceful because that was her witness, but trying to coax him into saying something negative about Lindsay, and he would not do it.
‘He just would not do it, and that really sits with me now.’
She recalls there was ‘something about Lindsay that makes you really want to like her’.
‘We could see a different view than all of you could, so there were times where she was crying, and there were times where she was being affected by evidence, testimony, the same as we were.’
She noticed how during the trial, Clancy tried to keep a ‘stoic face’ and avoid eye contact with the jury and others in the courtroom.
But Devlin said she would never forget Clancy’s utter devastation on hearing the coroner’s testimony about the autopsies on her children’s tiny bodies.
‘Will I ever forget the sobs that came out of Lindsay just hearing someone talk about the autopsy and the things that they had to do and the things that they found?
‘No, but I couldn’t let that be the control of what I was doing in that room,’ added Devlin.
Supporters of Lindsay Clancy are pictured holding signs outside Plymouth Superior Court on August 26
The supporters, in pink, are pictured yelling words of encouragement to Reddington during the trial
‘The judge instructed us that we’re supposed to keep emotion separate, and we did.
‘We kept trying. You know, as a human being, you can do the best that you can.’
Devlin said she had no idea of the immense national and international interest in the case during the trial.
But she said the jurors ‘did feel the weight of what we were doing’.
‘We knew that this was a topic that needed more discussion, and we knew that whatever it was that we decided would perpetuate that somehow, or we hoped that the focus would be on making it so that this could never happen again.
‘That when somebody asks for help so many times, when somebody says twice they called a suicide hotline and told them that they want to take their life, that just because they don’t have the exact plan of how they want to do it shouldn’t be a reason not to be taken seriously.’
Asked how the group felt when they realized they weren’t going to reach a unanimous verdict, she said many of the group were heartbroken and felt like they had failed.
‘We felt defeated, and I can’t lie, there was definitely anger.’
Reddington has since pleaded with President Donald Trump to pardon the mother-of-three
Since going public, fellow jurors and their families and friends have been threatened and targeted by cruel online trolls, Devlin said.
The husband of one juror told Our News Outlet his wife had received death threats after she gave a TV interview.
Devlin added: ‘We didn’t know what was happening on social media or any of those things.
‘I know that within our group, there’s a TikTok video of three of us [jurors] dancing with Kevin Reddington-that’s all AI.
‘But then somebody posted something they found that is a picture of the three of us in the scariest ugly faces.
‘There’s a lot of negativity about things and people take things out of context.’
Clancy has admitted to strangling her children with exercise bands but denies it was murder.
The former nurse said she was overmedicated while suffering from postpartum depression and that the cocktail of drugs she was prescribed brought on psychosis.
Asked for her reaction to the news Clancy’s defense attorney Kevin Reddington has filed a motion asking a judge to dismiss the case, Devlin replied: ‘We never wanted a dismissal. We never wanted her to be found not guilty.
‘We wanted her to be found not guilty by reason of mental illness.
‘Everybody wants justice for the Clancy children. They deserve justice.’
Little Cora, Dawson and Callan now lie together in St Mary’s Cemetery, Scituate, in Plymouth, with a black marble gravestone emblazoned with their names and tiny handprints marking their final resting place.
That justice, according to Devlin, is Clancy ‘getting the help that she needs’ and ‘more people understanding what postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis is and what a misdiagnosis of a mental illness does to a person, a family, a community, and right now, a nation.
‘Look at how divided this is.’
