A revealing moment on CBS Mornings sent the Lindsay Clancy case roaring back into the national conversation this week.

Juror Paula Devlin told Gayle King that the lone holdout who refused to join the other 11 jurors was a Black man — and the only person of color on the jury.

King stopped cold.

“Whoa. I have to sit with that for just a second,” she said.

The exchange came less than a week after the murder trial ended without a verdict, leaving the case unresolved and the families of Cora, Dawson and Callan Clancy without a final courtroom answer.

The CBS interview clip captured the moment Devlin disclosed the detail about the holdout juror.

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The racial makeup of the split does not establish why any juror voted the way he or she did. The holdout has not given a public account, and his identity remains private.

King’s reaction was unmistakable, and the clip drew intense attention because it cut against the assumptions many viewers had formed about the 11-1 divide.

The Associated Press reported that Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial on September 4 after seven days of deliberations and repeated notices that the jury could not reach a unanimous decision. Clancy did not dispute that she killed her three children at the family’s Duxbury, Massachusetts, home in January 2023.

The jury’s task was to decide whether she was criminally responsible at the time.

Prosecutors argued that Clancy understood what she was doing and acted deliberately. Her defense maintained that postpartum psychosis had caused a catastrophic break from reality and that she should be found not guilty by reason of insanity.

The deadlock centered on one juror. Eleven members were prepared to find Clancy not guilty because of a lack of criminal responsibility, while the remaining juror would not join them.

NBC10 Boston interviewed Devlin, jury foreperson Roni Carlson and fellow juror Kellie Farina after the mistrial. Carlson said the holdout acknowledged having reasonable doubt but still would not vote for a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity.

Carlson said she began filling out the verdict forms because she believed the jury had finally reached agreement. According to her account, the holdout then said he still would not find Clancy not guilty by reason of insanity.

Devlin said he rejected the other jurors’ arguments during the long deliberations. Farina said he could not get past the brutality of the children’s deaths even after expressing doubt about Clancy’s criminal responsibility.

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Those accounts came from jurors who favored acquittal on the question of criminal responsibility. The holdout’s own explanation has not been heard.

The short exchange between King and Devlin quickly became the clearest snapshot of how surprising the new disclosure was.

CBS Boston separately spoke with Juror No. 5, who asked to remain anonymous. She said the prosecution never supplied a single piece of evidence that erased all doubt and confirmed that the panel had split 11-1.

The juror said she initially believed Clancy was guilty and criminally responsible, then concluded the defendant had been in a severe mental-health crisis. She also defended the holdout from some of the criticism, saying several jurors entered deliberations with firm views and struggled to move past them.

Clancy’s attorney tried to have the dissenting juror removed after accusing him of refusing to apply the court’s instructions on reasonable doubt. Judge Sullivan questioned the panel, repeated the legal instruction and told them to continue deliberating.

When the jury remained deadlocked, Sullivan ended the trial with a mistrial rather than replacing one member of the panel.

The case now moves into another legal fight. Clancy’s defense has asked the judge to spare her a second trial and enter a finding that she was not criminally responsible.

The Associated Press reported Thursday that defense attorney Kevin Reddington argued prosecutors did not present enough evidence to overcome the insanity defense. The prosecution can seek a new trial because the first ended without a verdict, and the judge has not yet granted the defense request.

The CBS moment also triggered a wider argument over assumptions about the anonymous holdout.

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Whatever King meant by her pause, the disclosure does not resolve the legal questions or explain the holdout’s reasoning.

It does, however, add one more unexpected detail to a case that has already divided a jury, drawn national attention to postpartum mental illness and left prosecutors deciding whether to put everyone through a second trial.

For now, the verdict remains exactly where it was when the jurors walked out of the courthouse: unsettled.

This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.

 

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