Dawn Light was arrested Tuesday outside the Plymouth District Courthouse after allegedly trying to photograph jurors in the Lindsay Clancy trial. The 56-year-old from Sutton was taken into custody at about 3:40 p.m., as the jury was being handled with unusual care during deliberations.
She was charged with one count of intimidation of a witness, jurors. That charge reflects the focus on juror protection inside the courthouse, where anonymity has been tightly guarded while the case moved through deliberations.
Plymouth District Courthouse jurors
The jury in the Lindsay Clancy trial was sent home early on Tuesday after saying it was deadlocked. The panel consisted of nine women and three men, and the judge was told it had reached an impasse on a verdict.
That is the part of the case that makes the arrest more than a routine courthouse incident. While the jury was split and the trial was at a standstill, the court was also trying to keep jurors anonymous, including by having TV cameras turn away each time the jury was called in or dismissed.
Dawn Light of Sutton
Light was slated to be arraigned Wednesday. The open question is what she had in her hand, or aimed at the jurors, before the arrest; the record here says only that the allegation involved an attempt to photograph them outside the Plymouth District Courthouse.
For anyone watching the Lindsay Clancy trial, the immediate consequence is clear: the court treated juror identification as a security issue, and Light’s arrest shows that the boundary around deliberating jurors was being enforced at the door.
