A juror with an active restraining order and a history of domestic violence allegations sat on the Lindsay Clancy murder trial for weeks — and the court system that empaneled him has no explanation for how it happened.
The holdout juror who forced a mistrial in the case of a Massachusetts mother who strangled her three children had a 2021 criminal charge for assaulting his wife and an active restraining order taken out by his teenage nephew at the time of the trial. Standard Massachusetts juror questionnaires ask about arrests, charges, and court orders. Either the juror lied on his questionnaire, or the court didn't bother checking. Either way, the system broke down — and the establishment press would rather talk about his race.
According to NBC News, court documents and interviews reveal that the holdout juror faced a criminal charge in September 2021 for assaulting his wife. A police report states the juror's 13-year-old nephew called 911 after witnessing his uncle grab his wife by the throat and throw her into a dresser. The criminal charge was later dismissed — the ex-wife told NBC she did not want to testify because she feared losing custody of her daughter. The couple divorced after the incident.
Then last year, the same nephew took out a restraining order against the juror, alleging the juror pushed him to the ground and punched him repeatedly in the face. The teen wrote in his affidavit that his uncle told him, "You ruined my [expletive] life" and "You've had this coming your way for a long time." That restraining order was still active while the juror heard evidence in the Clancy trial.
NBC's chief legal analyst Michael Coyne put it plainly: "I don't see how they would've allowed him to be a member of this jury." The standard juror questionnaire in Massachusetts asks whether someone has been arrested, charged with a crime, or served with a court order. All of those boxes should have been checked. Coyne added: "I don't see how, if those questions had been answered correctly, one side or the other would've taken the chance with allowing him to be seated."
Meanwhile, the rest of the media focused on a different detail entirely: the juror is a Black man. CBS Mornings host Gayle King asked fellow juror Paula Devlin about the racial makeup of the jury and learned the holdout was the only person of color. King paused and said, "I have to sit with that for just a second." Breitbart and the Daily Caller covered King's reaction at length. HotAir declared the juror a hero who looked at the evidence and found Clancy "guilty as sin."
The real question isn't the juror's race — it's how a man with an active restraining order and a dismissed domestic violence charge ended up deciding a triple-murder case involving children. Other jurors described the holdout as "arrogant" and said he refused to engage in deliberations. One called his behavior "shocking." His own family members described him as a "narcissist" and said he has been estranged since the incident with his nephew. The juror also hasn't paid rent since last March, and his landlord secured a judgment of more than $12,000 and is moving forward with eviction, according to housing court records reported by NBC.
The Clancy case will likely be retried. Whether this juror's background affected his judgment is impossible to know. What's knowable is that the court let a man with active court orders against him sit in judgment of a mother who killed her children — and no one in the system caught it until it was too late.
