The Lindsay Clancy Trial Brings Back Bad Memories

You can't escape the Lindsay Clancy trial. Just about every major American news organization has reported on it breathlessly, plastering their websites and broadcasts with photographs of the accused woman in profile -- confined to her wheelchair, frightened and frail as a sparrow in some shots, almost indignant in others, like a noblewoman sitting for a daguerreotype in the 1800s.

It's certainly a horrific and tragic case. In 2023, Clancy strangled her three young children to death. She then tried to kill herself by cutting her own wrists and neck and jumping from a second-story window in her Duxbury, Massachusetts home, paralyzing herself from the waist down.

Were the killings of her children the result of a lucid mind, cold and calculating, or born from intense, postpartum psychosis? This is the debate that has divided America along mostly predictable lines. The more conservative see the case as black and white, and call for a guilty verdict. Meanwhile, throngs of women in pink have turned Clancy's exoneration into a sort of feminist cause du jour.

What really has me worked up, however, is how the trial itself has proceeded so far.

There's the fact that the jury hasn't been sequestered, despite all of the hullabaloo surrounding the case in the media and online. It's a basic precaution in a case as high profile as this one. That Judge William Sullivan has failed to do that is bad enough.

What's even worse has been Sullivan's repeated invocation of the Tuey-Rodriguez charge, sending the hung jury back to deliberate over the same topics that they had already discussed for dozens of hours.

The point of the Tuey-Rodriguez charge is obvious. Trials are lengthy and costly, and it behooves the court and just about all parties present to receive a unanimous verdict in one go. But a thorny problem arises when this charge places undue stress on the jurors and causes them to reach a unanimous verdict through coercion or, simply, exhaustion.

I know this too well.

In 2015, I was unfortunate enough to be selected for the jury on a drug smuggling case. The defendant was accused of delivering a watch with cocaine in it to a local prison, the sort of feat you might expect to see on a crime show on television, albeit executed much more clumsily. The defendant claimed to have been set up. The physical evidence strongly suggested otherwise, as did the defense's inability to produce the persons, or even names of persons, responsible for the purported setup.

After a relatively brief trial, the twelve of us filed into the jury room to deliberate. One rather portly man volunteered himself as foreman, with no objections from the others -- most of them relatively quiet types. The first order of business was a preliminary vote, just to see where everyone stood.

Ten votes guilty. Two votes not guilty.

Obviously, our attention turned to the two in the minority. One was a well-meaning woman who had seemingly had bad experiences with law enforcement in the past. She couldn't shake the feeling that the cops were hiding something, or trying to frame the defendant. She bought into just about everything the defense claimed.

The other juror was a Harvard-educated surgeon and one of the top dogs in his field. Surprisingly, he agreed with the first juror, despite the lack of evidence.

What proceeded was many hours of civil discussion that eventually boiled over into animosity, after we were repeatedly sent back to the jury room by the judge for further deliberation, not knowing when or if a mistrial was a possibility. Reaching a unanimous verdict felt impossible, but we were supposed to pretend that it was possible and that we had overlooked crucial information or perspectives.

At one point, the surgeon lashed out at the foreman, claiming something of a dictatorship. The surgeon had been cordial enough up until then, but it was clear from his crossed arms and sullen expression that he was displeased about not getting his way or having the loudest voice in the room.

I suppose I was used to this, having just arrived in the city from a hard science PhD program at the Ivy League, where my "mentor" was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, where a Nobel Laureate worked on my floor, and ego ran rampant -- an ever-present miasma, usually emanating from the less successful investigators in its most noxious form.

Dinner came and went. I tried reading the book I had brought with me to pass the time. I still remember that novel. Death with Interruptions by José Saramago. I never did finish that book. I was too frustrated to read or even eat. Perhaps I have subconsciously associated that book with the trial ever since.

After dinner, the foreman floated the scathingly brilliant suggestion that the ten of us who had continually voted guilty should change our votes to not guilty. The rationale was that the two holdouts were reasonable people, and therefore there must be reasonable doubts as to the guilt of the defendant.

This reasoning was obviously duncical, but we were all so beaten-up after our Twelve Angry Men-like experience that we acquiesced. I still remember when the final juror changed her vote. She was a sweet older woman, worried about the children. She knew in her heart the defendant was guilty. She didn't want to go along with this awful plan, but we placed so much pressure on her. We were terrible jurors and just wanted to leave. It was "just" a drug charge, after all.

After the not guilty verdict was announced, the judge came back to thank us. It was short-lived. The surgeon was apoplectic. Nothing could tame him. He excoriated the judge immediately, telling her that she had disrespected us and our time by constantly sending us back for deliberation, when all we really wanted was a mistrial. How dare she abuse us like that. The man stormed out of the room, leaving us in stunned silence.

After a few awkward moments, the judge finally spoke.

"Well, I've never had that happen before," she remarked, half-smiling and showing remarkable restraint.

"Okay, well, it wasn't that bad," the foreman reassured her.

This experience has stuck with me as an example of a complete miscarriage of justice. I can't help but think of it now, as those poor jurors in the Lindsay Clancy case work hopelessly hard to reach unanimous agreement in a trial that is so much more impactful than the one I was in. To make matters worse, the defense has openly called for the removal of a (non-sequestered) juror, placing even more stress on the deliberations.

Perhaps sending the jury back once to reconsider its stances is reasonable. After all, you want to make sure the jury has been thorough.

But doing so over and over may lead to a worse outcome in some cases. I've lived that experience, even if it was for a less serious crime. It's not just injudicious. It's a travesty.

Image: Greg Derr/The Patriot Ledger/AP