On September 4, Judge William Sullivan, of Massachusetts’s Plymouth County Superior Court, declared a mistrial in the case of Commonwealth v. Lindsey Clancy.
After seven days of deliberation, the jury was clearly “hung,” with one member refusing to support a verdict of “not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility” in Clancy’s killing of her three young children.
I suspect I may be the only person in America who doesn’t hold strong opinions on what verdict the jury should have reached.
Yes, I oppose murder. Yes, I’m especially appalled by the murders of children. Yes, I am skeptical of most “insanity pleas.” And yes, I’m aware that juries don’t always get things right. But I was not one of the 12 people who spent a week in that jury room, carefully considering the trial’s 21 days of testimony, its more than 1,500 evidentiary exhibits, and the details of the applicable laws. I don’t consider myself qualified to gainsay the conclusions of any of those 12 people.
I do, however, have a strong opinion on the controversy around, and the court’s handling of, one juror’s filibuster, his insistence on voting his informed opinion and personal conscience despite severe pressure to give in.
On the sixth day, the jury’s foreperson sent a note claiming that the holdout juror wasn’t following Judge Sullivan’s instructions on the meaning of “reasonable doubt.” The judge then privately lectured the jurors on the meaning of that term.
Clancy’s attorney then petitioned Sullivan to remove the recalcitrant juror, essentially claiming that a single vote to convict in the face of 11 votes to acquit constituted a violation of the law. Sullivan rejected the petition … but neither the lecture nor the petition should have happened in the first place.
American law recognizes the right of a jury to acquit a defendant “in the teeth of the facts.” We call it “jury nullification”: The jury decides that even though the defendant did X, the law forbidding X is wrong, at least in that case.
Prosecutors hate that because they prefer convictions at any cost. Judges hate it, because they like to be in charge and don’t think anyone should be free to ignore their “instructions.”
The lone juror in the Clancy case is a flip side of jury nullification. He decided, based on the evidence he’d seen and the testimony he’d heard, that she was guilty, and he wasn’t going to let himself get bullied into saying otherwise. The effect isn’t as broad as acquittal — the prosecutor is free to bring the case again — but it’s the same principle. Jurors get to vote their conclusions and their conscience. Period.
That’s important. The American “justice” system is less about actual justice these days than about padding prosecutors’ records with plea bargains and convictions to advance their careers, keeping cases flowing through judges’ courtrooms without inconvenient delays, and keeping American prisons operating at full capacity. Jurors are our only line of defense against that trend. Respect them.
Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.
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