Lindsay Clancy trial | Our extended interview with 3 jurors

This is Sue O'Connell from Commonwealth Confidential. Here's an extended version of my interview with three members of the Lindsey Clancy jury, including the four-person. And you can get much more of our coverage on the Clancy trial on our YouTube page. And of course, wherever you listen to podcasts. I want to thank you for your service because it really is a lot. Trials are always hard, but this one was particularly hard. I want to start with you Kelly and just ask basically what's one takeaway that you have from serving on the Lindsey Clancy trial? The takeaway that I have is for more mental awareness for women, men, children, and anybody with a beating heart. I believe in the jury system. I believe that Lindsey was wronged by the medical system. And I hope this changes things in this country for women and all people, really. Ronnie, there's not enough research on postpartum depression or psychosis. I believe this can bring about some change. I wish we could have come through for Lindsey. I feel very sad that we couldn't, but hopefully if we can make any change at all, that would be worth it. Well, how about you, what's what's a takeaway for you? I want to follow the two of them. I think the biggest thing that kept coming back to me was how many times she asked for help and how many times no one would help her because she said she didn't have a plan. And what is that really even mean? I don't have a plan that I know exactly what I'm going to do, but I know that I want to do something. I'm asking my family, my friends, the medical community that is supposed to help me. And no one could seem to do that. The decline was really clear. There was a big juxtaposition between how well their family was doing and how fast it went downhill. And it was very difficult to separate wanting justice for the children from the evidence that we were presented with. And it made us all, everybody in the room really think about mental illness and how it is presented. From where we sat in the gallery, the prosecution's opening statement was very different from their closing argument. What was your reaction to the opening statement versus the closing argument? Yeah, we all realized that as well. And I think it started sliding during some of the defense's witnesses that it became really clear that the evidence was not in their favor. And they overshot the mark maybe. Well, there were some things in the opening statement that were disproven or not supported by the prosecution's own witnesses. Did that impact how you view the prosecution's case? Or yes, it showed huge, reasonable doubt that they started out with one motive, saying that she hung out the window, things that they were saying was all disproven by professionals and sometimes their own professionals. So that brought huge, reasonable doubt to the case. I just found it to be harsh, so very, very harsh. I mean, again, maybe we're talking with ourselves here, but the fact that they had no character witnesses in regard to Lindsay of being a bad mother. I mean, right out of the gate, you're presenting all these medical professionals, but nobody's presenting, for the prosecution, a woman, a mother of three children. So I found it to be biased right out of the gate. I found them also to be kind of unprofessional and just without a heart. And for me, that, right away, I was like, okay, where is this going? Right from statement one, there is no compassion in this courtroom right now, which I guess is expected of a prosecution, but I thought it was very cold. I want to talk about the defense in Kevin Reddington because the situation, the horror of this case with Lindsay saying, you know, there was no doubt that she killed Cora and Calum and Dawson. And so there was a lot that the defense never has to present an argument, which you know, the defense that's up to the Commonwealth approved someone guilty. But there was a lot that Kevin Reddington didn't challenge because the facts of the case were there. And there were also a lot of things that Kevin Reddington kind of left out there that we armchair lawyers thought he should have challenged. Did any of that come into play with, did you go back into the deliberation room and review the case and think, well, you didn't say this, but you didn't say that or not very much for us. We were appreciative that Kevin didn't delay the trial two more weeks with, you know, bringing in other doctors, I mean, you can only listen to so much of that. Kevin was really, he really shot from his heart. Again, the prosecution had no witness to question her credibility. He brought all these people in, people that loved her family, their in-laws. I mean, even Patrick was very compassionate. So we appreciated the fact that he didn't just delay and drag it on with a bunch of more medical BS and get more to the point of really who Lindsay is in what her life was like. We kept having to bring ourselves back to the fact that she, we weren't trying to figure out if she murdered the children. She did. And she's admitting that. We're trying to figure out, did she know right from wrong at that time? And with everybody saying she loved your children so much and everything proved she loved your children from our journals to her mother-in-law, everything proved that she loved your children. So she had to have snapped and not known what she was doing. To me, that it was proof that she didn't know what she was doing. We had to look at the evidence, look at the things that Lindsay said. We got to watch tape of her having interviews. We listened to the words that she said, how she said them. We listened to things that we didn't want to listen to, audio things that we, nobody in the room wanted to ever hear again. And we made ourselves do that so we could understand things better. Did the prosecution make any points at all to do, did, was there anything that you were like, you considered? No. I honestly feel like the prosecutors did themselves more damage than good, by just not thinking about Lindsay. I mean, the whole picture, not just post-partum depression, not just delusional, not just the voice, but the meds, the whole cocktail of her mental health and these doctors that are prescribing this and prescribing them, and they're taking it off as a, and none of them communicated with each other so not one of them. I mean, Dr. Gelata got a call from women and infants saying, we can't take this patient because she has too much drugs in her system, but never returned the calls to women and infants. That was extremely damaging to me. This woman could have not reached out to more people. And I feel like the medicalists completely failed her. I want to ask you about some of the more difficult evidence and testimony that, you know, we had to, I want to be clear, I got paid to be there so I could leave anytime I wanted, but I was in the courtroom for the 911 call, which I was with journalists who have been covering crime and court cases for 30 years. I was with, you know, grizzled male reporters and every single reporter in that gallery was disturbed and/or crying from it. How did, how did you react to the 911 call and did you listen to it again when you went into the deliberation? Oh, we absolutely did. How did I react to it? It's something that I will never not hear. If I think about it, it was the most horrific thing. And when we heard it again in the jury room, we were crying again. We were just like, my God, the desperation, the despair in his voice was. Again, it's something that will stick with me. And I felt that it was genuine, it was absolutely genuine. There's no doubt about that. - Ronnie, yeah, it was horrible. I felt like, I felt like being sick, actually. - Did it sound like she said basement when he said where the kids are? - Absolutely not. - Okay, she was absolutely not. So she said no, no sentence. - And like Ronnie said, we're planning over. Are we hearing basement? - No, we're not, we're hearing basement, we're not. She was just garbled, pretty much. - So Paula, it's safe to say that none of you think that Patrick Lansie had anything to do with this. - We didn't know anything about Patrick before this, except for what he said on the stand. And you know, I can only speak for myself. I've seen a few things come up. I've looked at other things. Nobody, but us, we're in that room, looking at that evidence, the way that we did. And his reaction was so gut-wrenching. - And it never got ever allowed Patrick to be part of our deliberations for any of our, any of this experience. You just said this is done about Patrick. - So I don't want to dwell too much on the autopsy photos, but I want to ask, because I think that it's obviously important that the violence that was done to the children was represented as they were the victims in this. However, from my perspective, I thought they spent too much time the prosecution on the autopsy photos. And I felt that it was unfair to you, the jurors, considering that the act had been admitted to. What was your reaction to the amount of autopsy photos that you had to see? - Yeah, I thought it was too much. I thought the prosecution was just trying to get us to realize how horrific the whole thing was, which we knew the whole thing was horrific. But I think they wanted to keep piling on the morbid pictures and the morbid part of it all, which was not even what we were trying to just prove whether she knew what she was doing or she didn't know what she was doing. - So how did you, how did you care for yourselves? You couldn't go home and talk to your spouses or friends. Everywhere you go, everyone around the world is talking about this case. It didn't start that way. And by the time we got a couple of weeks in, everyone was talking about this case in one way or another. You could talk to each other, but you couldn't talk about the case. How did you, what self-care and group care did you have for each other in yourself? - You mean during deliberations and in the courtroom? We did a lot of hugging, a lot of hugging, a lot of crying. We, Ronnie administered a lot of time out, we had five minutes, a lot of five minutes. During one of our, when things got really, really heated, she said that's it, 10 minutes. Paula put on a little nice little melody of music. I'm not exactly sure what it was, but instrumental. - Instrumental, and we just, you know, again, we looked at it at the farm, and we just, we really, we became very close and compassionate early on. - All right, so Ronnie, you're a fifth grade, we're a fifth grade special needs teacher. What skills did you bring into the deliberation room from your career as an educator during this really difficult deliberation and trial? - Well, I thought it would help me more than it did. I'm used to running meetings, and so I thought that would help me, and it probably did help me a little bit, but these were not fifth graders, so. (laughing) - Sometimes we acted like this. - Yeah, and there was so much emotion. And being that it was, you know, lots of mental health, it was a mental health topic, and there were many of us on the jury who have experienced mental health. I mean, everyone knows someone who has. So we shared our own personal stories, which are very personal, and different people shared their stories, and I mean, how many juries are dealing with the mental health issue and sharing their own personal stories? So it was pretty intense. - Paul, a lot of folks now are saying, you know, we look at other countries like Great Britain, that if this case were in Great Britain, it would be a very different situation. It would not be a jerk. And when people have posed part of them, women have posed part of them, it's different. And a number of people are saying, this is the type of case that regular citizens should not have to sit on a jury for, that this was both horrific, and the death of the three children, the killing of the three children, Lindsey Clancy's situation, the sobbing that she went through or being paralyzed, and then you've got these world experts disagreeing and all of this pharmaceutical information, which is confusing to even a pharmacist, and we're asking you to use plural to judge this. Do you think that cases like this should not be juries that there should be a different system? - No, I think I really believe in the jury system. I believe that 12 people, 16 people, 18 people, whatever it takes that are your peers, it helps you to want to be aware of what is happening around you and in the world. And you know, one of the things we even talked about was how some places, if you have cancer, you can get an advocate, you can have somebody that can help guide you through these things, and that's one of the things that Lindsey didn't have. There wasn't someone that could take control of her case and help her navigate through it. And for us to realize that, for us to look at all of this, yes, it was very difficult. I don't know if I would ever wanna do it again. I know one of the jurors said, one and done. I am never going on another jury again. I don't know if I believe that for me, because I believe that it's our duty and that if we don't understand what is happening to all the people sitting next to us, how can we ever help each other in any way? - One thing we all agreed on and that we believe in Massachusetts, the jury should be pulled to the majority wins. We talked about that a lot. I personally believe in the American jury system. I think having a group of your average Americans and then deciding the fate of someone that whose life depends on it is very, the word I'm looking for, but it's a very beautiful thing. But we'd like to see Massachusetts go to a majority or almost pulled. - When the prosecution asked about SuClancy being a Catholic, you seem to have a very big reaction to that, did you? - Yes, I did, absolutely. - I also noticed that you stopped taking notes as regularly as you did after that. - Yes, I think so on that topic, because I don't feel like that is what we were supposed to be there deciding. And you have to take your life experiences with you, but you also have to separate your morality from the facts. - What was the thing that Kevin Reddington said that you found the funniest? (laughing) - And were you able to separate sort of the affability of Kevin Reddington to the cases? - He was fun to watch. - Was there anything that struck out? - His whole demeanor. - Yeah. - Was funny. And there was one time, whatever he said, I don't know, but I went (laughing) 'cause he was entertaining, which was good because we needed some of that. - In arrogant, at the same time. - Yes. - Like arrogant in entertaining, he would go back and forth between that. - But compassionate. - Yes. - Through his, with his arrogant side. - His compassion towards Lindsay was amazing, I think. - When he reached over and grabbed her hand, I think we all kind of fell apart that time. - And he grabbed her back a lot. - If I needed a lawyer, I would call him. (laughing) - For sure, I hope I'd never do. - Who's your least favorite expert with this? - There was a few, I'm gonna tell you right that. And now, so obviously Dr. Mack. - Yeah, how come? - I thought he was smug, I thought he was educated with, I mean, with his background, but the four weeks of post-partum depression, I didn't like his expressions. I felt like he was just not sincere at all. And I thought he took way much time out from that court to prove what he wanted to prove, and it was very ineffective to us, Juris. - How about you, right? - He wasn't Mack, he wasn't believable. He wasn't professional. Also, you know, being a special ed teacher, I'm very used to having. giving my students weight time, but some of those professionals needed so much weight time. It was hard to follow them. Time to answer, you know, learning disabled students that I work with, they need weight time, but they'll come up with the answer, but they need weight time. They're not as quick maybe as a student as a different student. I mean their resumes were extremely professional. I mean these doctors have gone 12 years of schooling, but the fact that they had to pause so often to think you would have thought with their knowledge and their schooling and then being these professional doctors it would have came out. They had to think about things a lot. It made it really disbelievable. I think I want to say it really made it disbelivable and it made it feel like they were more worried about how they were gonna say it and how then what the actual fact was that they were trying to get to. When you were coming back for the last time and you had we're deadlocked and you were coming into the room. I'm being honest to you Kevin Reddington just as we were all sitting waiting stood up and said I'd like to stay I want to go to the Supreme Judiciary Court. Did you all have to turn around and go back to the room and you didn't know what was happening and what was that like? We had no idea what was happening. You know we were waiting for an answer from the last note we sent which renamed the juror that the number of the juror that who had reasonable doubt but would not acknowledge. He acknowledged it to us but would not acknowledge it in his verdict. We were waiting for a response then we were called in so we figured you know he's gonna call a mistrial and we didn't know what. I think by that point we were all very defeated and tired and some people put their heads down that people were crying and then the one juror said why don't I just remove myself. What? Now I don't think that's possible. It was just we were exhausted our brains were. We ended up waiting two and a half hours beyond that we were told it was an hour before the Supreme Judiciary Court was able to get back to us so that was extremely frustrating. We were like caged animals in that room at that point. We knew it was the last day we just wanted to go home we just wanted to rest and get back to our lives and get out and when you found that did you find out that there was actually a chance that you might have come back on Tuesday after Labor Day did you did you ever find that out after the trial or it there was a chance that we talked about it. I don't think it was talked about in the courtroom but we were at the point where like we're not coming back. We are not coming back because we spent so much time with this man and you know there's always there's always so much you can say and we're you know we had some quiet jurors that got up and passionately spoke from their heart stem we all made a scenario you know put yourself in this position and just listen to me we were from anger to all right we're crying we're asking you to please please just be open-minded and look at the doubt that is there's so much doubt stop forgetting about Lindsay killing her kids everybody knows it the world knows it but look at the doubt that's all we need to do to get this woman to help she deserves and at that point we were like I mean some of us in the end even said I'm not coming back tomorrow there was some of us are like I'm not coming back tomorrow because it was it was really that difficult and Paul we should also say that the deliberations it wasn't like you just all went in there and voted you actually had people you had to convince you had people on different charges like there was before we got to the actual deadlock there was a lot of robust discussion and changing of mind right yes and we gave those people the opportunity to do that ask questions look at evidence say out loud what you think one person said you know I really believe in my gut that she wasn't in psychosis and she was guilty but I have to look at all the evidence and the evidence is not showing me that that is true I have so much doubt and I have to do the right thing I mean we all had different ways of dealing with it the stress in the room I think reading laughing joking we could make fun of each other we could listen to music and one of the jurors I did it one day another juror did it another day just started playing something you know we needed a break but ultimately in the end we were able to convince three of the jurors yeah through the evidence through the exhibit I guess they ultimately we were able to convince three jurors just because he wasn't on it in the end we were ultimately able to convince would not convince but prove to these the three other jurors that were not on Lindsey's in favor of Lindsey with the exhibits the evidence and everything else that they were able to see it say all right you guys you know what you're right it's about doubt it's not about this that or anything else it's about reasonable doubt which goes for the defense and the defendant and they were lovely in the end and thanked us for helping them to understand and see what was right except for that one person and luckily we gave the time for that yeah I think sometimes it was easy to be like we're not gonna get anywhere we're done I more than once we went home at night saying tomorrow we're sending to the judge and then we would come in in the morning and a different person would stand up with a different way of trying to do something and we'd get into conversation and the next thing you know it's four o'clock in the afternoon and we're saying again this is it we're done we're not gonna get anywhere and then we come in the next day and it was one day right at the end it was maybe quarter or four and everybody is like yelling at me to say we're deadlocked say we're deadlock get the bell right we have to bring a bell for our for a court officer and they're yelling at me and saying you have to write that I'm like no it's quarter or four we all need a break it's time to go and we'll talk about it tomorrow so there was that one day that I just was like it was too close to the end of the day and we were all fighting and then once you said that other people agreed with it you know like when the judge when the judge sent the Tully Rodriguez when he gave us the Tully Rodriguez we went back into that room and dissected it to try to understand what it really was because we were just getting ready to ring the bell and ask them to bring us hard copy and Charles showed up with a copy for each one of us so we went through that and we talked about it and you know we talked about listening to each other we have looked at all of this evidence everybody every day does anybody else want to look at anything else is there anything that we haven't touched on that anybody is still concerned about so right you would you would say the the holdout was a rogue juror yeah I mean he had reasonable doubt he admitted he had reasonable doubt after we watch that video of the interview I think that's when it was he admitted he had reasonable doubt and I started filling out the forms I was so excited I actually there were three forms I had a fill out and I started filling them out I wrote my signature on each one and then he said but I'm still not gonna say that she's not guilty by reason of incident or he would just and I like we tried all different ways right and we had one of the jurors in a very calm way asked him some questions and he said I this and this didn't show it and this didn't show it you know that he had doubt and he said it out loud and they said to him that's doubt oh no I didn't say that any clearly did so many times for me I'm not sure if rogue is the right word so but every one of us in the hours of a frustration would get up and walk the room because you just couldn't sit anymore and would all go out of the cart the exhibits he he I think got up to the cart once very briefly and went back to a seat he would not he would not interact with us and and try to understand we read him on numerous occasions the definition of a reasonable doubt from Judge Sullivan's instruction he actually said one day in the end or why don't we have the judge come in and read it again and we were like no we have it in front of us we don't need that and we would highlight it and you know so and so this is the definition of reason of death. But he had the hardest time getting off the fact that Lindsay viciously killed her children. So I in the end felt that he just was failed and you know just refused to be open-minded. Right right do you do you think that this is a process you didn't know what's happening but do you think Judge Sullivan should have had an inquiry into this juror like he had an option to look more deeply into what was happening. Yes and obviously he was trying to balance you know the judge the referee does want to put a thumb on the scale. Do you think Judge Sullivan should have done an inquiry into this juror? Well what he did was he took us all individually and asked us if if we understood the reasonable dollar doubt and everybody said yes. So when we came back in the jury room at that point I said well if everybody said yes then you know cuz he should have said no. I said okay everybody raise your hands if you said yes and he raised his hand. That doesn't make sense. And that's when a lot of us said you know what that's it that says no changing this guy's mind. I think it was difficult it was hard I had to explain to my 10-year-old granddaughter why I couldn't talk to her when I came home on nights that she was there because I had nothing that I could give in and I had an amazing conversation with her about what a jury is not about the case but being on a jury and how it works and she asked me questions I think that's so important that we don't get afraid of something that's difficult. There's always going to be difficult things in our life and we have to face them and I would not have wanted to face this with other people I can't imagine doing this without the people that were in that room with me. It's just I have goosebumps thinking about it. The bond that we have in so many ways of going through something traumatic because it was traumatic to us you know it's gonna take time to process it I think that's why we kind of push back some we needed a little bit of space to I still can't believe I did this. Do you think that she should be retried? I would like to see her be retried absolutely. Do you think you would like she should be retried? I would like him not to retry her but if he chooses to I will be in that courtroom and I will support Lindsay to the end here so I hope not but I don't know. I'm with you totally on that I will be in the courtroom. Do you think she should be retried or not retried? No I think she should have the mental health that she needs whether that's to stay in to expiry or go with where her parents are and Wallingford. This is it's ridiculous to waste another Jerry's time all the money that cost the state to get those people and all the evidence shows that she was mentally insane when she killed her kids.