Clancy juror says holdout didn't show 'single piece of evidence' explaining vote
A juror in the trial of Lindsay Clancy is sharing new details about what he said happened inside the jury room that led to a mistrial in the case of the Massachusetts woman facing first-degree murder charges for the 2023 deaths of her three young children.
Nick Dargie, one of the three men on the 12-person jury, told ABC News' Aaron Katersky that the lone holdout juror who prevented a unanimous verdict did not show any evidence explaining his vote.
"There was several times I would ask him to show us evidence or, you know, describe a witness testimony that helped to prove what he was saying, and ... he couldn't," Dargie, 25, said in an interview Wednesday.
https://abcnews.com/GMA/News/clancy-juror-holdout-show-single-piece-evidence-explaining/story?id=136312798Open linkView original on lemmy.world
126 replies
Gotta say, I don't like this. If you are on a JURY, you know a fucking Jury, I feel you should put your emotions aside and focus on the facts of the case.
The facts are that Lindsay Clancy showed clear signs of her mental state degrading, only really had pills pushed on her by her medical team, expressed concern to her husband about how she was going to harm the kids in December of 2022, and both her and her husband expressed how the medication was making her worse and worse to the point of suicidal intent up to the night of the incident.
For people like you and me who are not on the jury? An emotional response is okay. The brute fact is 3 children lost their lives, but if you are on the Jury and her fate is in your hand, you really do need to be cautious about this. You need to put facts over feelings. To me, this looks like an open and shut case of Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity. The facts point to it.
If this Juror really did not present anything to the contrary and went off vibes? That sucks. That really really sucks. And if he was browsing his phone in the room as stated here... WHY THE FUCK ARE PHONES ALLOWED IN THE DELIBERATION ROOM!? Was he betting on the case on Kalshi and fixing this to make money off it going to mistrial!? Was he looking at social media about this case!? Was he talking to people about this?!
This is an absolute failure on the Juror's part and he failed at his civic duty.
I dont know why he keeps saying that like he's owed evidence. Jurors arent required to present any evidence. This Dargie guy sounds like a whiner.
Well they arent required to have evidence. Their reasoning is their own.
The legal standard is reasonable doubt. Jurors cannot be punished for their decision though.
But some reasoning should be required for a vote. If you can’t prove any, it means you didn’t do any, and you’re making a major decision haphazardly
I disagree. "I didn't believe these witnesses, but I did believe these witnesses, but I can't articulate why," is perfectly valid.
But he didn’t even do that. It says they asked the person to point to any testimony and they couldn’t.
And he doesn't have to. "I didn't believe the defense's assertions of insanity, I believe the state's case beyond a reasonable doubt. I can't point to one, two, or three specific things, I just didn't believe it in it's totality," is valid.
Edit: A lack of ability to articulate his reasoning would certainly be a hinderance to getting anyone on his side, but the validity of his vote doesn't depend on his ability to pull a Twelve Angry Men.
See this is kind of the point. He didnt even do that much, according to the article. Which is what most people would do when it’s their thought. If the juror was somehow compromised or lying, they would act like they acted here. No reason, no reasoning, no defense.
I dunno, neither of us were in the room. We can’t say exactly what happened, but to me this reeks of some tampering or something. But we won’t know.
Tampering? Why? This isn't some big trial with millions of corporate dollars on the line, or some important person's freedom, or some politician's power. This was just one sad woman who did a tragic thing, with no big outcome for anyone else. Who's going to bankroll and operate a jury tampering scheme, and why?
I'd say he did it with his vote, whether he vocalized it or not. And, of course as you said we weren't there so this is right out of my ass, being bullied by eleven other people might have made him defensive and withdrawn.
Miscarriages of justice happen every day, maybe there would be fewer if jurors that weren't sure didn't go along with the group. Demonizing this guy sends a message that jurors in the next high profile case will remember.
Sure, you can jump to the defense of this random guy, but by all accounts it sounds like he was just a sociopathic incel. Sometimes the guy everyone is saying is acting like a giant piece of shit asshole is in fact a giant piece of shit asshole and not some virtuous scrappy underdog.
It's 2026. That's the status quo now. Expecting people to think before, during, or after their actions is uncalled for.
It might not even be that someone told him to. Maybe he just really hates her and doesn't want to admit that.
No, cause explaining your reasoning just gives people something to argue with you about. I don't even know why they deliberate. If it requires skmeone else tomconvince you, then it isn't your opinion, it's theirs.
If you get convinced than your opinion changed and you now have a new opinion of your own.
But you are supposed to be forming an opinion based on what you saw in court. The whole point of their being 12 is that if all 12 are convinced then the person must be guilty. By letting people convince each other, all it takes is one very charismatic person to convince everyone. So then your jury is really the opinion of one.
That will just give a license to arbitrarily remove jurors. There's no way to do one without the other.
The quote is that he couldn't "prove what he was saying," which suggests that he had his own idea of what happened instead.
We don't know what that idea was (yet?), and depending on what it is, Lone Juror may be justified or not.
Because of the way the justice system is configured in the US, a juror's vote is unassailable. This is what jury nullification stems from. That can and surely does go the other way, where someone is convicted of a crime they didn't commit, just because the jury felt like it, damn the evidence or lack thereof.
Can't wait until they decide that federal juries get to be handpicked by a "neutral party."
Is no one else just a little, tiny bit enormously concerned that social media is having a post-jury interview fest? Like holy shit, is no one else worried that we are suddenly scrutinizing jurors? That's the first step to killing jury nullification. Imagine getting called to a high profile case, and you make a decision the public doesn't like. Imagine losing your job over it due to public backlash. Imagine getting stalked and harassed, literally for performing your civic duty. Imagine you stand up against fascism by utilizing jury nullification against an unjust law, only to be mercilessly harassed by the police for months on end because focusing on jurors has become the norm.
When the trial is over, the jurors should cease to exist. The media should not "tell their story" because their story begins and ends with the trial. Jurors identities should be kept sealed once the trial concludes.
Yeah, I was really weirded out by all the interviews happening right now and how openly they are discussing what went on behind closed doors.
You're right, but being people who have freedom of speech, there's little that can be done about that.
Unless you start flagging on the people who do the interviews.
Not really. After high profile cases, jurors giving interviews is pretty common. Several jurors spoke about the OJ trial as well.
Buddy, if you lose your job for serving on a Jury, you're gonna retire to your mansion after the lawsuit.
And the jury interviews are not mandatory. I honestly have no idea why these jurors are participating given how unhinged people are about this case. I would have kept my head down and gone the hell home once the case was over, rather than willingly hand my full name over to the media.
That's only true in a country with a functioning justice system.
Yea, once you are placed on the jury, you have the right to vote “because I said so”
Coming soon, Judge Dredd.
IANAL but the article suggests a juror’s vote is not unassailable, which is why this ended in mistrial (there was something wrong with the trial) rather than a hung jury.
A jury’s vote is unassailable, so if 12 people unanimously say “not guilty because that guy deserved it” or “not guilty because that shouldn’t be illegal” that verdict has to be accepted.
Hung jury is the reason for the mistrial. A mistrial is any trial that ends invalidly before a final verdict.
A single juror's vote can only be challenged for a small number of reasons, like disregarding the judge's orders, doing outside research, discussing the case outside the jury room, and curiously, mentioning jury nullification.
This is where the details of Lone Juror's idea come into play. Unless it's something wacky like "it's possible aliens did it" or "demonic possession", Lone Juror would not likely be challenged.
That juror could end up in legal trouble because it sounds like they lied during the voir dire process. One of the things they will ask you is if you are willing to follow the judge's instructions. We had a lady dismissed because she said no, she would use her own judgement.
What the fuck is the point of trial by jury then?
Yeah, no the chance to remove a juror is lonnng past. There is nothing that can be done to them now.
Love that all the incels are going to bitch and whine about a case they only know from headlines for a month.
Isn't that most ppl though? That's how news works for the most part, isn't it?
I don't know any particulars about this specific case because I did not follow it. But that being said, he doesn't have to justify his vote in my opinion. There's a reason we have a jury of multiple people. The entire system was designed specifically for this possibility to arise to put a check on the possibility of mob mentality.
I don't know if he made the right call. I'm just glad that he has the right to make the call of his conscious in this system.
Fun fact: There are legal rules for being on a jury, your "opinion" notwithstanding.
The misogynistic MAGA activist on the Jury whom you are praising admitted that he had doubts on her guilt, but stuck with his guilty verdict anyway. That isn't just illegal, it's unconstitutional.
You cannot acknowledge the constitutional requirement for innocence, and then insist on guilt anyway while under oath as a Juror. It's perjury.
And that's why it's a mistrial.
First of all, didn't praise him. Seems like you missed the multiple times in my response I pointed out I wasn't making comment on the correctness of his decision. Whether you just missed it or are deliberately ignoring it for the sake of getting to be a dick online, I can't tell.
Second, I dont know what he did or didn't say (I didn't follow the case, remember?), that's his fault for saying anything about his decision. In fact, that's what my entire post hinged on; the concept that a juror does not and should not be forced to divulge their reasoning. The ability for a juror to disagree with the group is what makes a jury work at all.
Whether or not he committed perjery in this instance is not relevant to my post, which was more a comment on how a juror must be free to disagree with the jury otherwise the whole thing falls apart.
The way jury instructions work it's pretty hard to not justify your vote unless you have no intention of following the instructions. The guilty or not guilty decision is usually phrased in several yes or no questions. If you're answering one differently than 11 other people, there's a reason.
Might be a reason, but that doesn't mean you have to divulge it. That's the whole reason a jury works; each juror can come to their own conclusion. Tautologically that requires them to be able to decide differently than the rest of the group.
They don't have to tell others outside the jury, but part of deliberation is telling the other jurors why you believe what you do.
Jurors do not have to "follow the law". If it was that simple, we would just let the judge decide innocence and guilt.
Jurors can acquit people they know are guilty, so it stands to reason they can convict someone they know are innocent. It's not ideal, just superior to the alternative.
Just to be clear for any idiots in the room, and there's a lot in this particular room:
Yes, jurors have to follow the law. You will be instructed on what it is for your region.
What they can't do is prove your decision was against the law unless you're stupid enough to admit it.
Thank you, I'm going crazy in here watching stupid people pull shit out of their ass so confidently.
Like the idiot you responded to who thinks that there aren't any legal rules to being a Juror. How are people upvoting such a stupid statement?
Yeah, a Juror has the ability to choose a verdict, and cannot be coerced into a specific verdict. However, deliberately choosing an unfitting verdict, such as insisting on guilt without evidence or while admitting reasonable doubt, is a violation of the oath you take as a Juror, and it can lead to being perjured.
The Juror in question admitted that there was reasonable doubt in the case, but refused to drop his guilty verdict. This was a direct violation of the law. You cannot legally acknowledge reasonable doubt, but insist on a guilty verdict. There are actually "wrong" choices by a juror. There was an attempt to remove this juror from the case because of his illegal conduct, but the judge decided letting the jury deadlock a third time for a mistrial would be better for some reason.
It's important to note that if it were not for this openly MAGA, law-breaking juror, the rest of the jurors were locked in on acquittal because the evidence points to a psychotic episode, and not a deliberate act of malice.
Part of how jury nullification works is that jurors can't be held accountable for the verdict. They can in theory be charged with perjury if it can be proven they lied under oath during voir dire, but that's more of a threat than a reality. In a civil case it's possible for a judge to set aside a verdict if there's clearly no evidence, but that's not possible for criminal charges.
From what I was told during selection you have to be honest but you cannot be punished for your answers nor can a juror be punished for how they vote.
The alternative it some places is to have a panel of multiple judges instead. Jury is stupid.
It's weird to see the other jurors shit talk the lone one to the media. Why do it? It make them look like assholes.
Tribes. Just tribes.
Because we are wondering what went on. We know something weird must have happened, and the lone holdout probably isn't going to find a camera. At the same time, the other jurors were pissed, and they want the world to know that this guy is to blame, not them.
How does it make the responsible jurors look bad? It makes the line holdout look bad.
I mean, from what I've heard, I don't think he makes the holdout look bad. The holdout, as it turns out, was voting guilty. The others were voting based on vibes and social media. Them outing themselves as protecting Lindsay Clancy... certainly a wild choice IMO. If my understanding is correct, It's the same level as crazy as denying the Jan 6th insurrection. Or the Epstein files don't exist or aren't actually that important.
That's not as bad as the defense attorney making a public call to Trump for help. In Massachusetts.
“For fucks sake it’s 2026 and I just want to kill someone. What’s the GD problem?”
Some people are just contrarian
Being a contrarian is a huge red flag
No it isn't
I see what you did there
No you didn't.
There is an actual condition called "Oppositional Defiant Disorder". Some people will oppose authority no matter how valid it is.
Exactly. And a lot of that comes from unaddressed trauma as a child.
Real trauma, not TikTok trauma
Misogynistic piece of shit should never have been on the jury
This is strange, we know there was expert testimony that Clancy was not suffering psychosis. Did the jurors simply forget that testimony or was there further conflicting testimony that actually cast doubt?
The public reaction and copycat killing are disturbing to say the least.
Yeah but didn't the defense also have an expert testify the opposite?
A singular expert's opinion is never a "case closed" matter.
My understanding is that the prosecution expert said that she hadn't given her doctors reason to suspect she was experiencing psychosis.
Ie, he didn't say that she wasn't psychotic when she murdered her kids.
The expert then conceded a lot of points to the defence about how psychosis could have set in quickly.
But I might not be recalling properly.
https://youtu.be/3QtoaoMYzMU
John Oliver did a whole episode about "expert testimony". I recommend watching it so that you don't ask stupid questions like this again.
Tl:Dr: "Expert" isn't a title or a credential that matters, and "expert testimony" is often just complete horseshit.
The expert in this case was a qualified and practicing psychologist, but if you looked it up first you wouldn't make stupid statements.
Insurance companies have plenty of qualified and practicing doctors to say your prescribed treatment isn't medically necessary.
The articles I read about the first 3 that spoke out seemed like they had an axe to grind. I'm not putting much stock in their opinions.
She strangled her kids and tried to hide behind mental illness, a not guilty would be an absolute travesty.
Moron
Imbecile, see I can do that too
Troglodite
Three dead children isn't enough evidence? Are you all fucking insane?
11 of those 12 jurors should never serve on a jury again. Fucking insane nutjobs.
The trial was never about if she killed the kids or not (everyone is in agreement she did it), it was about if she was legally insane when it occurred.
Certainly not everybody is in agreement that she did. Many people are blaming the husband.
Idk why you got downvoted for this. You didn’t say you blamed the husband, you just stated a fact.
Only nutjobs on tiktok
Give all the shit surrounding him, yeah I entirely believe he manipulated things to go his way. Embezzling donations while skimping on the kid's gravestone (singular) after he cremated them in defiance of local law? That piece of shit is endemic of America as it stands.
Context matters.
It was never about acquittal, it was about spending her life in prison, or a prison for the criminally insane. Your MAGA holdout blew it entirely, and got her released. Good job.
Once again, virtuosic incompetence at work.
The holdout was voting guilty. How is the 1 person voting guilty a "MAGA". Honestly explain that. She killed those kids. Also, should MAGA be added to Godwin’s Law, because FFS.
Because MAGAs are sociopathic and stupid, and can't understand that mental illness might explain the behavior.
Godwin's Law has been proven to be outdated, by GODWIN himself. MAGA is a corrupt, treasonous, racist, misogynist, pedophilia cult of Domestic Terrorists, and is a genuine ACTIVE National Security Threat. It's not some dumb conspiracy theory, and if you are trying to promote that concept, you're a MAGA, too.
Lose the guilty/not guilty angle, she's going to jail either way. He was insisting that she wasn't legally insane when it happened. Despite a mountain of evidence.
You have no idea how jury selection works, obviously.
you dont either, ive been in pool a couple times, knowing how its done, its definitely not be randomoness.
Jury nullification in action.
That's not what jury nullification is.
You're right. I didn't realize all 12 jurors need to agree to acquit a guilty person for it to count as jury nullification. I thought it means more generally "I don't care what the law says, I will vote not guilty anyway".
No, a single person can nullify the jury in exactly the way you said, but that doesn't seem to be the situation here. This wasn't strictly going against the law. This was a case that was all about interpreting the gray area, and he interpreted it differently from the rest. The fact that 11 went one way, indicates that the gray area wasn't so gray for most of them, but it was still a judgement call.
Jury nullification is where the verdict is obvious, and is just, and someone just decides to ignore the facts and evidence, and still vote against it.
My wife talks about being on a jury when she was young, and the guy was a notorious local shithead that had been robbing and assaulting people often. They finally had a good case on the guy, and laid out a perfect case, and the entire jury voted to put him away, except for one older lady who said she will NEVER vote to put a young black man in jail.
That's Jury Nullification.
The lone juror was the guilty vote, and the "innocent" verdict in this case is "meaning she will go to the prison with grippy socks instead" which also isn't nullification so you just didn't know anything at all.
Good thing you know so much and can explain it in a condescending tone on the internet. Must feel great.
This was a mistrial not jury nullification. She can still be retried
It wouldn't have been nullification either.
The whole concept of being able to claim insanity as a defense comes from a time when people literally thought you could be possessed by demons.
Murdering children is an act of insanity. Always. That’s not a defense, it’s a given.
When evaluating the morality of an action, you must consider the causal and intentional facts.
Everything else, such as mental illness, either supervenes on these causal and intentional facts or it is irrelevant.
Whether that person subsumed alcohol or whether they are mentally ill simply does not matter except insofar as it relates to the two questions above.
If you disagree with any specific sentence above, please tell me which one. All of the replies are currently non-sequiturs and red herrings.
You are trying to attach rational arguments to a totally emotional opinion.
The law requires that the defendant had formed criminal intent when they committed their offense. Shooting someone in the head is murder, but if you killed that person to stop them from killing someone else, then there was no criminal intent, and it's not murder.
Yes, she killed her kids, and yes, she knew she was killing her kids, but she was also in the grip of a terrible psychosis, that prevented her from forming criminal intent.
And it was never about releasing her, it was always about the type of place she would reside. A prison, or a prison hospital. A person with your type of thinking overplayed their hand, and got her released instead.
So she says. I mean https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/post-partum-psychosis/ would suggest... probably not.
Also, drunk people or people on drugs... who aren't aware of their actions... is the implication there that they're not responsible because they were prevented from forming criminal intent? 3 children were hunted down and murdered. Then a staged suicide.
This isn't a "rational argument". The "not guilty by reason of insanity" defense has nothing to do with this case. That standard doesn't even exist in Massachusetts where this case was tried.
You've clearly never been around a person deep in the throes of postpartum psychosis. I have, and it was fucking terrifying. There is no demon possession....so stop going on about that like its some gotcha. It is a condition where the mother can have a full mental break and fully believe things are happening that in no way, shape or form are happening. And the reactions to then are wildly intense
This is a legal case, not an ethics case. Though that debate has it's merits; just not here, talking about the legal ramifications of the killings.
You've been walking in circles on this in every reply. No one thinks what happened is right. No one is defending her actions.
The debate you've been dancing around is whether or not she was criminally insane at the time. Not whether or not she was innocent. And going off about how insane derives from demonic possession is not relevant, not pertinent, and a bad faith argument
Insanity isn't a get out of jail free card, she's going to be institutionalized for a long time, maybe even her whole life. It can be a fate worse than jail, but at least she has the proper medical attention needed
My problem isn’t with the punishment. From an ethics perspective, the framing of insanity as having any normative relevance is simply incorrect.
The relevant facts are causal and intentional.
But then again, the average person has the ethics of a baboon, so this is academic.
The US justice system is explicitly punitive and not habilitative. That is why questions of "insanity" as it relates to culpability are critically important, for better or (largely) worse. This means that the outcome kf the process is not victim or even a perpetrator oriented--it is intended to provide the general shitass public with adequate feelings of cathartic vindication. Whether a perpetrator is deemed "sane" or not factors into that heavily.
I couldn't find a source on the possession thing, but maybe you're referring to the general way that mental health used to be explained by the supernatural when we didn't fully understand the involved conditions.
https://www.findlaw.com/criminal/criminal-procedure/the-insanity-defense-history-and-background.html#%3A%7E%3Atext=Courts+in+ancient+Rome+and%2Cpardon+or+mitigate+a+sentence
This article was a fun read, and so was the wiki :)
Also, they're looking for specific, named conditions/diagnosis. Nobody is claiming she's insane because she killed her kids. They're pointing to the history of mental health issues/treatment, various prescribed psych meds, the immediate subsequent suicide attempt, etc. Mental health professionals testified for both sides. It isn't a vibes thing.
You don't know what that word means.
The point is she wasn't in a right state of mind when it happened. But I'm glad we have legal experts like you to serve on juries.
Massachusetts doesn't even have a "not guilty by reason of insanity" defense on the books at all, so this was a whole lot of words to say absolutely nothing. It's amazing how many people are so confident to say extremely stupid things about this case.
Under Massachusetts state law (specifically known as the McHoul standard), a person is not criminally responsible if, at the moment of the offense, a mental disease or defect left them without the "substantial capacity" to do one of two things:
The McHoul standard was decided in 1967, and the law makes no mention of "possession by demons".
Okay you have to understad that we are trying to have a civilisation here.
Your point of view is not consistent.
If you want a murderer punished like you would a "rabid animal" because we are just animals and don't need further understanding than there is no reason to object murder in general.
A lot of crime is evidence of insanity, from narcissism, megalomania; really, all homicide is rooted in insanity.
We lock those people the hell up, though.
No one gets a cushy institutionalization unless their docs all agree. Into genpop until then.
Cushy institutionalization? You've got some wild misunderstandings of how any of this works. It's prison, with prison conditions. Nothing fucking cushy about it, but I'm guessing you're far more interested in punishment than rehabilitation.
I'm certainly not interested in rehabilitating child murderers. Just get them out of society forever.
And this is why the world thinks us US Americans are belligerent and cruel by nature.
I'm fine with being belligerent and cruel to people who harm children. If you have to be taught that that's wrong then there's no place for you in this world. We have more than enough people that need help as it is.
Hey, everybody! Look at this guy who can only be kind to one person at a time!
I can be kind to lots of people. I'm just not doing it for those who by their own actions have rendered themselves undeserving of it. That energy is better spent elsewhere.
In many, many significant ways, perpetual civil commitment (to an "institution") is far more horrific of a state than being in prison. People like you are incredibly fucking stupid.
Good for him, you shouldn't let a murderer off just because of peer pressure.
I mean, wasn't it either prison or high security mental health facility? I don't think she gets off scott free either way.
I don't get why people act like the dude was the sole hero blocking her from going free and getting starbucks on the way to her next infanticide.
FYI, it's scot-free.
She has a chance of getting out of the mental health facility, thats what I believe most people are having an issue with. Personally I think she was and is insane but I don't think anyone who murders children should ever walk free. It's a hard spot to be in because she definitely needs the mental help and she wont get that in prison but the murders are unforgivable.
Its not on us to "forgive" her. I don't know why people feel like they personally got victimized by her. From all accounts she was a loving mother, the people that actually knew and loved the kids are supporting her bc they are certain she must have been insane at the time.
She should have a chance of getting out when sane since there is no reason to keep someone when not a danger anymore. I don't really get off on punishing people, i only tolerate it as long as it serves a purpose.
Children are sacred, killing them is unforgivable.
Seems to me that if that were the case he could have pointed to a particular piece of evidence or witness testimony that supports his conclusion.
Well, there was that whole trial. And everyone does agree she strangled her kids.
She admitted to the killings, yes. The problem was deciding her mental fitness to be held responsible criminally.
Lets not just ignore the legal nuance that makes this a complex situation. Otherwise we'll just talk past each other the entire time.
But didn't the other 11 jurors vote not guilty by reason of insanity?
The lone juror