Lindsay Clancy's Jury Room Fight Is Now in Court

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

This is The Big Breakdown, a long look back at some of the biggest stories we're covering for you at the Hidden Killers Podcast and True Crime Today. This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brueski and Robin Dre.

Tony Brueski (0:18)

Well, the Lindsay Clancy trial has obviously come to an end. But the scuttlebutt, the controversy around all of it certainly has not. There's a lot of questions that are still out there. A lot of questions about the holdout juror. Were they following the letter of the law in terms of reasonable doubt? There's evidence, there's claims from some other jurors that on that charge, that responsibility of being a juror, that maybe they weren't. But were they holding true to the other part of their responsibility of holding true to their convictions? If you believe they believe they did what they did because that's what they believe, then they were.

The two can't really be in the same room at the same time, but the jury instructions ask you to make both of them coexist. We're here to explain why they can't, and why it's not necessarily a problem of maybe the juror or the jury, but more so the rules to which govern them, the instructions to which we say, here, play by these. Oh, wait, they don't make any sense. Well, figure it out, kids. There's only someone's life on the line. Here to help us do all of that, Bob Motta, defense attorney, host of the podcast Defense Diaries joins us for Tuesdays with Bob, along with Robin Drake, retired FBI Special Agent for the Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis Program and master class extraordinaire, Robin Drake. He is with us as well. Bob, I've been looking forward to talking with you about this because, I mean, it gets into the legal weeds and it gets a little confusing, very confusing, as you try and work your way through it. But let's start here because the argument that's being made on social media, and I get it, to see from the letter of the law, did this holdout juror have reasonable doubt? Other jurors are saying that he admitted to having reasonable doubt, but just flat out refused to check the box for not guilty by reason of insanity because he was following his convictions. Both things true at the same time.

Kind of leads to a bit of a problem now, doesn't it, Bob?

Bob Motta (2:43)

Sounds like it, anyway.

Tony Brueski (2:45)

Bob, your mic's off.

Bob Motta (2:48)

Sorry about that. When I drink my coffee, I mute it so you don't hear the coffee drink.

Tony Brueski (2:54)

How polite of you.

Bob Motta (2:55)

I mean, you know, but the end game is I leave myself muted, which happens all the time in my show. Yeah, look, man, like before we even jump into it, everything that we know about what's been going on in that room and what went on in that room is coming from four or five of the people who in theory have lost the argument, right? So the holdout hasn't said a word.

So what I'm doing is I'm taking the account of the people that are speaking as their own accounts. It's not a finding. So you know what I mean? Until we actually hear from this guy, if we ever do.

Tony Brueski (3:33)

These are the accounts of the people who were in that room, but they are accounts. They are not.

Robin Drake (3:37)

It's not a recording. We're not looking back at the take.

Bob Motta (3:39)

There's no transcript of it.

Tony Brueski (3:41)

There's no transcript of it.

Bob Motta (3:42)

But for argument's sake, if it's accurate, if he said, I've got a reasonable doubt, I see the reasonable doubt, but I don't care. I'm not doing it.

Reasonable doubt isn't an opinion you get to hold and then decline to act on. It's a switch.

Once you flip it, the verdict form itself is filled out. That's it. If you said, well, there's a reasonable doubt, boop, that's it. It's over. There's no more conversation. Like this is, there is no back and forth. If you say that there's a reasonable doubt, it's done. The deliberations are done. That's how that thing operates. And it's the one thing that jurors are not permitted to do. I mean, if it's true, if he said, yeah, okay, whatever, I see the reasonable doubt after seven days of everybody screaming at him. And he says, this is where I'm at with it.

I see that there's reasonable doubt, but I don't care for all the reasons that we've talked about for the last month. You know, he's one of those, maybe one of those eye for an eye guys. You know, like she killed her kids, she gets punished, period, end of conversation. Which is, and I keep saying this, it's fine to feel that way. It really is.