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A judge on Wednesday denied Lindsay Clancy’s legal team’s request to investigate the holdout juror who refused to find Clancy not guilty by reason of insanity.
Kevin Reddington, Clancy’s lawyer, asked Judge William Sullivan for an evidentiary hearing to investigate juror Michael Desronvil, who has publicly said the evidence was clear that Clancy was not suffering from psychosis at the time she murdered her three young children in her Massachusetts home.
Reddington publicly criticized the juror and wanted Desronvil questioned, his cellphone records examined, and his original juror questionnaire reviewed. Some legal scholars warned such a probe would set a dangerous precedent for future jurors, and Judge Sullivan said the court could not probe the juror’s private reasoning during deliberations.
The Clancy trial was declared a mistrial last month after days of deliberation. According to other jurors, 11 of the 12 members were prepared to find Clancy not guilty by reason of insanity, but the lone holdout, Desronvil, refused to agree. Desronvil was subsequently doxxed online and then came out publicly to tell his side of the story, emphasizing that he was following the evidence.
In a video released in late September, Desronvil said the focus should be on the killed children, not him.
“I know the whole focus has been on me, but we want to reel everything back and put the focus on the three angels at hand,” he said. “The ones that can’t speak for themselves, the ones that can’t defend themselves, and the ones that can’t fight the battles — and those are Cora, Dawson and Callan.”
Additionally, attorneys representing Desronvil said in late September that they planned to file a bar complaint against Reddington over his public statements about their client, accusing Reddington of improperly targeting the juror after the mistrial. It remains unclear whether the complaint was ultimately filed.
Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse, is facing life in prison for strangling her children with exercise bands. The mother has admitted to killing the children, who ranged in age from 8 months to 5 years old, but is trying to evade criminal liability with an insanity defense.
It’s unclear if the prosecution will retry Clancy, who is currently being held at Tewksbury Hospital, a state-run psychiatric facility.
Related: Lindsay Clancy Holdout Seen On Camera For First Time With Defiant Message
