Attorneys for the lone holdout juror in Lindsay Clancy’s deadlocked murder trial are preparing to file a professional ethics complaint against her defense lawyer, Kevin Reddington.
The legal team representing Michael Desronvil, 48, announced they will ask the Massachusetts bar to investigate Reddington, 75, for allegedly targeting their client after the mistrial. Tyler Cox, one of Desronvil’s lawyers, said host Sean Hannity, “We are going to file a bar complaint.”
“[Reddington] said that all he’s done is file a motion. Well, even if you take that as true, which it obviously isn’t, the motion that he filed was unprecedented,” Cox said. “You don’t attack jurors this way, you don’t single them out.”
The escalating feud between Reddington and Desronvil’s representatives follows Judge William Sullivan’s declaration of a mistrial on Sept. 4, after jurors submitted three notes saying they were hopelessly deadlocked. Several panelists later disclosed that 11 of the 12 jurors had been prepared to find Clancy, 36, not guilty by reason of insanity, but Desronvil alone refused to join that verdict.
Desronvil and his lawyers maintain a different account of his position. They insist he was convinced of Clancy’s guilt and “didn’t have any doubts,” though they acknowledge he would not find her not criminally responsible.
Reddington responded to the brewing conflict by asking Sullivan to investigate Desronvil for potential juror misconduct. The veteran defense attorney raised questions about whether the holdout had lied on his juror questionnaire and whether he had used his cell phone during deliberations.
During a hearing Tuesday for Clancy, an exasperated Reddington denied any wrongdoing in filing that motion or in his public statements about Desronvil. “I’m tired of hearing about me persecuting people,” the defense attorney said in court.
The clash has drawn intervention from prosecutors, who on Monday asked Sullivan to impose a gag order restricting Reddington’s public commentary about the jury and Desronvil specifically. That motion is scheduled for argument at Clancy’s next hearing on Nov. 2.
Sullivan has also moved to shield jury questionnaires from public scrutiny amid the intensifying focus on Desronvil’s conduct and background.
Clancy stands accused of strangling her three children — Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months — with exercise bands in the family’s Duxbury, Massachusetts home on Jan. 24, 2023. Prosecutors allege she planned the killings methodically, but Reddington has argued she was in the grip of severe postpartum psychosis, hearing a voice commanding her to kill the children and herself. Clancy cut her wrists and neck, swallowed pills, and leaped from a second-story window, surviving but paralyzing herself in the fall.
Prosecutors have not indicated how they intend to proceed with the case, leaving open whether they will retry Clancy on the original first-degree murder charges, pursue lesser charges, negotiate a plea agreement, or abandon the prosecution entirely.
Reddington did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the planned bar complaint.
Clancy’s next hearing before Judge Sullivan is scheduled for Nov. 2.