Paula Devlin said the lone holdout juror in the Lindsay Clancy trial was a Black man and the only person of color on the jury, after jurors could not reach a not guilty verdict. Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial last week after the panel reported an 11-1 split.
Devlin made the disclosure in an interview with CBS Mornings on Friday. She said the jurors ranged in age from 22 to 70-ish, and Gayle King responded, “I have to sit with that for just a second.”
William Sullivan declared mistrial
The split left the case unresolved in Plymouth County Superior Court in Plymouth, Massachusetts, where Lindsay Clancy faced charges tied to the deaths of Cora Clancy, Dawson Clancy and Callan Clancy. The jurors told the court they were divided 11-1, with one juror voting to convict Lindsay Clancy of first-degree murder while the rest favored finding her not criminally responsible.
The reported race of the holdout juror does not change the mechanics of the mistrial, but it does add a concrete detail to how the panel reached its deadlock. In a jury trial, unanimity is the goal when jurors are asked to decide a criminal case, so one dissenting vote can stop a verdict from being returned.
Paula Devlin on CBS Mornings
Devlin’s account also puts a name and face to a courtroom split that had already ended the trial for now. The only Black juror, she said, was the lone vote against the majority view, turning the final deliberations into a one-vote barrier between a verdict and a mistrial.
The children at the center of the case were 5-year-old Cora Clancy, 3-year-old Dawson Clancy and 8-month-old Callan Clancy. For readers following the case, the key development is not only that the panel deadlocked, but that the only juror holding out was the only person of color on the jury.
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Cora, Dawson and Callan
The new detail leaves one question open: why that juror disagreed with the other 11. Devlin did not describe his reasoning, and the interview added no explanation for what drove the split over criminal responsibility. What it does show is that the mistrial came down to a single vote, with the majority on one side and one juror on the other.
