Can We Agree: Lindsay Clancy Trial Holdout Juror

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Welcome to The Smerconish Podcast for Independent Minds.

Michael Smerconish (0:47)

Tonight we're live. One man, one vote, 11 people against him in a country that can't decide whether he's a hero or a pariah.

The case, Lindsay Clancy, Duxbury, Massachusetts, a labor and delivery nurse described by her own nanny as a loving mother. Sent her husband out for takeout, took her three children to the basement, Cora, five, Dawson, three, Callan, eight months and then strangled them with exercise bands. She went out a window, survived, paralyzed, her defense, postpartum psychosis. Five weeks of testimony, 40 hours of deliberation, 11 to 1 for not guilty by reason of insanity.

The one holdout, mistrial, then the man. Reports say a dismissed domestic violence charge, a restraining order still active when the trial began, an eviction case, none of it disqualified him. What he put on the juror form, we still don't know. The other jurors told the judge that he admitted reasonable doubt and wouldn't budge. The defense asked to have him removed. The judge said no.

Online, he became a guardian angel, presumably a white guy standing up to 11 bleeding hearts. Then a fellow juror told Gayle King that he was black and the story became 11 white jurors trying to remove a black man.

On Monday, the judge sealed the jurors names, citing a real and present risk of harm. The next morning, the Boston Globe printed his name anyway. You won't hear it from me. So the last line of defense against 11 people who'd made up their minds or a man who ignored the judge, the law and the evidence. Carlos Vega, 35 years in the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office, most of them prosecuting homicides, fired by Larry Krasner, ran against him.

Danny Savalos, criminal defense attorney, NBC News legal analyst, senior legal analyst. His profession comes down to one juror with a reasonable doubt who holds. The Clancy juror, villain or bulwark? Let's see where they agree. Gentlemen, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate this conversation. Carlos, in Massachusetts, the state has the burden to prove that she was sane. Could any prosecutor, could Carlos Vega have won that case with that standard?

Carlos Vega (2:51)

Yes, because I have had, in my career, several cases where they have posited the defense of insanity and have had to rebut that and show that the person was sane and had the mens rea to commit the crime and to be legally culpable.

Michael Smerconish (3:07)

You've had that burden and it's winnable as a prosecutor.

Carlos Vega (3:10)

Absolutely.

Michael Smerconish (3:12)

Jeb Rubenfeld wrote a piece for the Free Press, Danny, that caught my eye. We'll put the cover of it up on the screen. He said that an acquittal in this case would have been a travesty. Do you agree?

Danny Cevallos (3:22)

Well, I think when we're talking about an acquittal, what we're really talking about is not guilty by reason of insanity. And I'll use insanity because Massachusetts has a slightly wordier definition. But the bottom line is that an acquittal was never really, really a possibility. In a way, the prosecution had two avenues that were going to be good results. It was either not guilty by reason of insanity, in which case she would be committed to a facility until such time as she is seen, and no longer a danger, which in a way is a win for the people of the state of Massachusetts. Or she would have been convicted and gone to prison for her entire life. So an acquittal, I don't think was ever really in the cards, even though they were in a whisker of getting it.

Yes, I mean, not, yes. However, this was a case where I don't think realistically, the fact that there was one holdout juror, what I think the surprise is that there weren't more holdout jurors for guilty. I would have expected four, maybe five. But you have to look at Massachusetts, their test for insanity. The burden is unbelievable. It's like nowhere else in the country.