Lindsay Clancy murder trial: Judge rejects defense's bid to investigate lone holdout juror

Lance Reynolds, Boston Herald on Oct 21, 2026

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A request by Lindsay Clancy’s defense attorney for the court to take a closer look at the holdout juror in her triple murder trial has been denied.

Plymouth Superior Court Judge William Sullivan has rejected defense attorney Kevin Reddington’s motions to preserve records and conduct a “limited inquiry into Juror Doe,” citing key precedent from the state Supreme Judicial Court’s decision in the Karen Read case.

Sullivan, in a ruling issued Wednesday, called the defense requests “inappropriate.”

“This Court concludes that any further judicial inquiry is inappropriate,” Sullivan wrote, “given the mandate that the court must not delve into a juror’s subjective reasoning, thought process, view of the case, or relationship to the other jurors,and must not inquire into the jury’s deliberative content, collective thought process, or any disagreement among the jury.”

The lone juror who blocked Clancy from being acquitted — identified in filings as Juror Doe — has since spoken publicly following the mistrial, stating in a recent national television interview that he was influenced by how “methodical” he thought the Duxbury mother was while killing her three children.

That juror, Michael Desronvil, said he had no doubt Clancy was guilty, telling Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends” that he was struck by her “thought process” during the killings.

In motions filed last month, Reddington requested the court preserve all confidential jury questionnaires, Desronvil’s summons and badge, sign-in sheets for jury phones during deliberations, and video footage of the jury-room corridor.

Reddington also asked the Commissioner of Probation to produce under seal records from the statewide domestic violence registry concerning Desronvil, including any active orders. If those records were secured, the defense wanted the holdout juror brought in for a private evidentiary hearing.

Judge Sullivan ruled that any potential evidence brought forward to challenge Desronvil’s standing on the jury only surfaced after he declared a mistrial on Sept. 4, following nearly 40 hours of deliberations. That information, the judge stated, “simply is not relevant to whether there was a manifest necessity for a mistrial.”

Citing the SJC’s Karen Read ruling, Sullivan noted that manifest necessity is assessed based strictly on what was known at the time a mistrial is declared, and post-trial accounts from jurors cannot render a mistrial improper.

“Because post-trial information potentially affecting Juror Doe’s impartiality cannot be used to attack the determination that a mistrial was manifestly necessary,” the judge wrote, “Clancy is not entitled to an evidentiary hearing on that issue.”

Plymouth District Attorney Tim Cruz has not yet announced whether his office plans to retry the case.

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