The attorney for Lindsay Clancy’s holdout juror says his client had zero doubt and a mountain of evidence, rejecting claims he refused the law.
Attorney Edward Paltzik is pushing back hard after a jury foreperson accused his client of refusing to follow the law on reasonable doubt in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial. The case ended in a mistrial when one juror would not join the rest in a not-criminally-responsible finding.
Fox News reported that Michael P. Desronvil was the lone holdout after seven days of deliberations. Eleven other jurors were prepared to find Clancy not criminally responsible. Judge William Sullivan declared the mistrial on Sept. 4.
Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse, admitted killing her three children, 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson, and 8-month-old Callan, at the family’s home in Duxbury, Massachusetts, in January 2023. Her defense argued postpartum psychosis left her not criminally responsible. Prosecutors said she understood what she was doing and planned the killings.
Desronvil held out for a conviction. The foreperson sent the judge a note accusing him of refusing to follow the law on reasonable doubt. That charge is what Paltzik is now answering in public.
In a preview of an interview set to air on “Fox & Friends,” Paltzik told host Kayleigh McEnany that his client did not waffle and did not ignore the instructions given to the jury.
Paltzik said:
"Michael had zero doubt,"
and added:
"A lot of evidence, a mountain of evidence,"
McEnany pressed the point directly.
"Zero doubt. No doubt, and he had evidence to back up his position?"
That exchange frames the dispute in plain terms. One side cast the holdout as a juror who would not apply the law. His lawyer says the record in the room pointed the other way, and Desronvil refused to paper over it.
The same holdout later said he believed the physical evidence and witness testimony showed Clancy knew what she was doing. That is the core of his position, and it is why the panel could not reach a verdict.
Readers following the case have already seen how the Clancy murder trial collapsed in mistrial after a single juror blocked a unified result. The new comments from counsel put a finer point on why that juror would not move.
After a full week of deliberations, the split was stark. Eleven jurors stood ready to accept the defense theory of postpartum psychosis and a finding that Clancy was not criminally responsible. Desronvil would not join them.
A deadlock under those conditions is not a technical glitch. It is one citizen telling eleven others that the proof of knowledge and intent still mattered. The foreperson’s note turned that disagreement into an accusation that he had refused the law itself.
Paltzik’s answer is that the holdout had no reasonable doubt and had the evidence to support that view. In an insanity-style defense, the question is not only whether a terrible act occurred. It is whether the defendant understood the nature of the act and could be held to account. Desronvil’s camp says the trial proof answered that question against her.
Coverage of the aftermath has also tracked how the holdout juror broke his silence about pressure inside the room. The lawyer’s latest comments fit that same pattern: a juror who would not surrender his read of the evidence, then a public defense of that stand.
Fox News reached out to Clancy’s defense attorney, Kevin Reddington, for a response to the accusations surrounding the holdout. He chose not to reply.
Prosecutors have not announced whether they will retry the case. Clancy is due back in court on Sept. 29. Until that next date, the public record still shows a mistrial, a 11-1 split in the jury’s last posture, and a lawyer insisting his client followed the evidence rather than defied the law.
The children are gone. The mother admitted the killings. The legal fight is over whether postpartum psychosis wiped out criminal responsibility or whether she knew what she was doing when she killed Cora, Dawson, and Callan. One juror would not accept the first answer. His attorney now says that choice rested on proof, not defiance.
Separate reporting has noted that the holdout juror hired counsel amid backlash after the mistrial drew public anger. Paltzik’s on-camera pushback is the latest step in that defense of the juror’s conduct.
The foreperson’s note zeroed in on reasonable doubt. That is the standard criminal jurors are told to apply. If the holdout believed the physical evidence and witness testimony showed Clancy understood her actions, then a not-criminally-responsible verdict would have required him to set that belief aside.
Paltzik’s framing leaves little room for the opposite story. “Zero doubt” and “a mountain of evidence” are not the words of a juror who checked out or ignored instructions. They are the words of a lawyer saying his client did the job the system asked him to do, even when it left him alone in the room.
Other accounts of the panel’s final hours have described how a foreperson later described the holdout’s stance after the mistrial. The lawyer’s interview preview answers that narrative with a simple claim: the evidence was there, and the doubt was not.
Judge Sullivan’s mistrial order closed this chapter without a verdict. It did not erase the underlying facts of the killings, the defense theory, the prosecution’s contrary case, or the 11-1 divide that ended deliberations. It also did not settle whether the Commonwealth will put Clancy before a new jury.
For now, the holdout has a lawyer on television saying he applied the law as he understood the proof. The defense has declined to answer that claim in the same forum. Prosecutors have stayed quiet on a second trial. The next scheduled court date is Sept. 29.
When a jury is told to weigh evidence and one juror will not bless a verdict he does not believe, that is not a scandal. It is the system working the way it was built, even when the result is messy, public, and unfinished.
