One of the 11 jurors who wanted to find Massachusetts mom Lindsay Clancy not criminally responsible for killing her three children said the panel viewed the case as a chance to make things “better for other women” and families — a thought process that one legal analyst is calling “problematic.”
“Even though we didn’t know what was going on outside of our little bubble that we were in, we knew that this was a turning point, and this would be something that could change something to make it better for other women in the future, for other families,” 65-year-old Clancy juror Paula Devlin told “CBS Saturday Morning” over the weekend. “You know, justice for those children is this never happening again.”
According to Devlin, before the 11-1 deadlock that led to a mistrial, the jury had been split eight in favor of finding her not criminally responsible, two were undecided, and the holdout and one other juror were leaning toward a guilty verdict.
“Devlin’s statement is problematic,” said Neama Rahmani, a Los Angeles-based trial attorney and legal analyst who has been following the case. “Jurors are supposed to decide cases solely based on the facts of that case. In the Clancy case, they were to decide whether she was criminally responsible.”
The jury’s role is to apply the law, not to make law, he said.
“It is not appropriate for the jurors to consider the impact of their decision on other women, children or cases,” he told Fox News Digital.
LINDSAY CLANCY MISTRIAL DECLARED AFTER JURY DEADLOCKS IN KILLINGS OF HER THREE CHILDREN
There’s not much that can be done, however, he said.
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“Judge Sullivan already declared a mistrial and the law generally prohibits inquiry into juror deliberations,” he said. “There is an exception for outside influences that may prejudice the jury, but that would need an additional inquiry into whether the jurors considered information on traditional or social media or whether this was just Devlin’s interpretation of the importance of the case.”
Several jurors and Clancy’s defense attorney, Kevin Reddington, have claimed that the holdout at the end didn’t show his fellow jurors the evidence that he believed pointed toward guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
LINDSAY CLANCY LAWYER SAYS HE PLANS NEW MOTION TO DISMISS AFTER JURORS SPEAK OUT ON MISTRIAL: REPORT
“If he had shown us some evidence, then we all would have been OK with that,” Devlin told CBS.
The holdout juror has not responded to Fox News Digital’s attempts to reach him and has not spoken publicly about the case as of Monday.
LINDSAY CLANCY JUROR ADMITTED ‘REASONABLE DOUBT’ BUT STILL REFUSED INSANITY VERDICT, FOREPERSON SAYS
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A GiveSendGo fundraiser to benefit him has raised over $115,000 in the past few days. According to the organizer, it is meant to cover “security, lawyers [and] lost work.”
Separately, Clancy’s husband Patrick Clancy vacationed in the Hamptons over the weekend, pictured with his new wife Rachel Danis at the Milk Pail farm stand on Montauk Highway in Water Mill, according to a photograph obtained by TMZ.
Lindsay Clancy has been accused of three counts of first-degree murder after the strangling deaths of her children, Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months. Her defense did not dispute that she killed them with exercise bands but instead argued that she was not criminally responsible due to postpartum psychosis.
