A fifth juror from Lindsay Clancy’s deadlocked panel has stepped forward to accuse the lone holdout of failing to ground his guilty vote in any trial evidence.
Nick Dargie, 25, said in an interview Wednesday that the holdout juror never produced a “single piece of evidence or witness testimony” to justify his stance against the 11 jurors who favored acquittal by reason of insanity. Dargie, one of only three men on the 12-person jury, said he repeatedly pressed the dissenter during 38 hours of deliberations to point to something concrete from the five-week trial.
“There was several times I would ask him to show us evidence or, you know, describe a witness testimony that helped to prove what he was saying, and … he couldn’t,” Dargie said.
The panel’s impasse produced three separate notes to Judge William Sullivan detailing their 11-1 split. Dargie said the holdout’s inability to cite evidence ultimately forced the group to send the final note Friday declaring themselves hopelessly deadlocked, prompting Sullivan to declare a mistrial after seven days of deliberations.
“Otherwise, like there’s nothing wrong with somebody having a completely opposite opinion … that would be a hung jury. That, like that, is our justice system,” Dargie added.
Dargie came into the trial with no prior knowledge of the case, having been serving in the military when Clancy, 36, strangled her three children — Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and 8-month-old Callan — with exercise bands at the family’s Duxbury, Mass. Home on Jan. 24, 2023. The defense argued throughout the trial that Clancy was suffering from postpartum psychosis and could not be held criminally responsible.
Foreperson Roni Carlson had already revealed Tuesday to NBC10 Boston that the holdout “admitted he had reasonable doubt” yet still refused to join the majority in finding Clancy not guilty by reason of insanity. Carlson and other jurors have described the dissenter as “arrogant.”
But the anonymous juror No. 5, who spoke, offered a more tempered assessment of the deliberation room dynamics. That panelist said the holdout was “not the only one that was unwilling to see things from the other side.”
“There were some big personalities in that room. But at the end of the day, I feel like it just came down to an inability to kind of move past your convictions,” juror No. 5 said.
The majority’s position aligned with the defense’s central argument that Clancy’s postpartum psychosis rendered her incapable of criminal responsibility for the killings. The 11 jurors who backed acquittal spent the week-long deliberation period attempting to persuade the holdout to change his vote, according to multiple panelists who have now spoken publicly.
Dargie is the fifth juror to break silence following the mistrial, joining Carlson, juror No. 5, and two others in describing the tense deliberation environment. The holdout juror himself has not spoken publicly.
Clancy remains in state-run psychiatric care at Tewksbury Hospital. Her next hearing is scheduled for Sept. 29.
