A Massachusetts woman who served on the jury in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial said in a television interview Friday that she felt like she failed when the panel did not reach a verdict, triggering a mistrial.
"Everybody says you're not supposed to feel like you failed, but you have a task to come out unanimous. And we tried everything we could to get to that end. And I feel like we let down Lindsay," Paula Devlin told WCVB, a Hearst TV station in Boston.
The highly watched trial came to an end last week when Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial due to a deadlocked jury. The decision came after the panel spent about a week deliberating behind closed doors.
Devlin and other jurors have publicly said that they were ready to declare Clancy not guilty by reason of insanity, but that a single holdout juror refused to vote to acquit despite admitting he had reasonable doubt in the case.
Clancy, a Connecticut native, is charged with three counts of first-degree murder in the Jan. 24, 2023, deaths of her children, 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson, and 8-month-old Callan. She is accused of strangling the children while her then-husband, Patrick Clancy, was out of the house.
After the killings, police said that Clancy cut her wrists and neck and jumped out a second-story window in a suicide attempt. She was left paralyzed from the fall and has appeared in court using a wheelchair.
Clancy's defense maintained she was in the throes of postpartum psychosis at the time of the killings and not criminally responsible, while the prosecution argued she purposefully planned the deaths and described her as controlling and manipulative.
Devlin, 65, of Whitman told WCVB most of the jurors agree with the defense that Clancy was not guilty. She said she believes the medical community should do more to support women with postpartum mental health issues.
"There was a clear indication that the medical community failed her and not just her, but her whole family, because something like that affects the whole entire family," Devlin said. "And if everybody can be educated in a better way, then it will help the whole family unit."
Devlin said the jurors were initially split in their thoughts about the case. She said eight originally believed that Clancy was not guilty due to lack of criminal responsibility, while two thought she was guilty and two others were undecided.
"We did not start out 11 to 1," Devlin said. "Everybody had different opinions and different reasons and different ways that they got there."
Devlin said the jurors were sent to deliberate with 297 pieces of evidence, including an emotional 911 call from Patrick Clancy that she said some jurors had trouble reviewing during deliberations.
"We all tried to help each other," Devlin said. "It was hard to separate the children from what our task was, and it was very emotional."
Devlin previously spoke to NBC10 alongside two other jurors and described the holdout juror as "arrogant."
"He really did not take anything that anybody said," said Devlin, who works for a defense contractor.
At one point, the juror asked about the medications, Devlin said. She said they went back over the evidence, and nurses who served on the jury also "spoke to that specific thing," Devlin said.
She said the holdout juror "just completely disregarded the information that they gave him," she added.
Devlin described Reddington, Clancy's lawyer, as both arrogant and entertaining. She also characterized the compassion that Reddington showed his client during the trial as "amazing."
Reddington has asked the judge to find Clancy not guilty based on reports that the holdout juror believed there was reasonable doubt in the prosecution's case against her but refused to vote not guilty.
This story includes previous Hearst Connecticut Media Group reporting.
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This article originally published at Juror in Lindsay Clancy trial says panel failed by not reaching verdict: 'We let down Lindsay'.