Jurors in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial appeared to admit that nurses on the panel used their own medical knowledge to help interpret toxicology evidence during deliberations.
The admission came as several jurors criticized the lone holdout who blocked a not-guilty-by-reason-of-insanity verdict.
“He was very arrogant. He really did not take anything that anybody said,” one juror said. “The nurses—he tried to ask a question about the medications, and we went back to the report from South Shore Hospital. We had the toxicology report. We could see exactly the amounts. The nurses in the room spoke to that and talked to that.”
Asked to confirm that nurses were on the jury, the woman said they discussed the issue with the other jurors. She then complained that the holdout “completely disregarded” the information they gave him.
The remarks suggest the nurses may have used their clinical experience to explain evidence to the rest of the jury instead of relying solely on expert testimony presented in court.
Another juror said the holdout rarely approached the cart containing the trial exhibits and did not sufficiently engage with the rest of the panel.
“He would not interact with us and try to understand,” she said.
The jurors also revealed that they rejected his suggestion to ask the judge to explain reasonable doubt again.
“He actually said one day, in the end, ‘Well, why don’t we have the judge come in and read it again?’” one woman recalled. “And we were like, ‘No, we have it in front of us. We don’t need that.’”
One juror said the holdout acknowledged having reasonable doubt after the panel watched a video interview. Believing they had reached an insanity verdict, she began signing the verdict forms.
“I was so excited,” she said.
The holdout then refused to find Clancy not guilty by reason of insanity, according to the juror.
“He said, ‘But I’m still not going to say that she’s not guilty by reason of insanity,’” she recalled.
The jurors said he could not move past the fact that Clancy had “viciously killed her children.”
Clancy was charged with killing her three young children at the family’s Massachusetts home. Her lawyers argued that she was legally insane, while prosecutors said she understood her actions. The judge declared a mistrial after the jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict.