Michael Desronvil, the holdout juror in the high-profile Lindsay Clancy trial, spoke out in his first television interview since a mistrial was declared.
He said in the interview with Fox News, which aired in full Thursday morning, that his life was turned upside down after the mistrial was declared.
“That was interesting. I’ve never been on a jury before,” he said. “Right after the mistrial, it was like night and day.”
Eleven of 12 jurors were ready to clear Clancy of criminal responsibility, with the majority feeling that the Massachusetts mom was in the grip of a rare condition called postpartum psychosis when she strangled her three young children. But Desronvil sided with the prosecutors, who had argued that Clancy knew what she was doing.
“Well, definitely I had a lot of evidence to back up my claim,” he told Fox News. “But because out of respect of the other jurors in the court system, I will put that to sleep for now until, you know, they go through the process of the court system.”
Desronvil said he thought Clancy was “methodical” in the “execution” of her kids.
“I have a daughter myself that’s 5 years old,” he said. “So seeing these three kids, it’s emotional. You can see the innocence, the pure joy in them. It’s hard to just take that away.”
Desronvil also spoke about hearing the 911 call from Patrick Clancy and the impact it had on him.
“It was surreal hearing the pain in his voice, hearing the desperation from that clip,” he said. “It was surreal.”
The jury’s foreperson had claimed in an earlier media interview that Desronvil had admitted having “reasonable doubt” about Clancy’s guilt, but wanted to convict her anyway. But Desronvil maintains that wasn’t true.
The jury’s deadlock forced the judge to declare a mistrial on Sept. 4, leaving the case unresolved. The Plymouth County district attorney has yet to say whether he’ll seek to put Clancy on trial again.
Neither side disputed that Clancy strangled her children, Cora, Dawson and Callan, in the family’s home in 2023 before trying to end her own life. But her attorney said she was a loving mother experiencing deep delusions and other mental health problems, for which she had been getting treatment.
Since the trial ended, Desronvil has been both publicly praised and scorned for his actions, and his personal life and past financial and legal problems have become the subject of scrutiny.
Among the public revelations: He had a restraining order against him at the time of jury selection and was facing eviction from his apartment due to over $12,000 in unpaid rent. He also was accused of domestic violence in 2021, a charge that was later dismissed.
He said in Thursday’s interview that the 2021 incident “got blown out of proportion.”
Asked by Fox News about whether he told the truth on the juror questionnaire, Desronvil said he did.
“Well, what I did was I answered the questionnaire truthfully,” he said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
This story originally appeared on NBCBoston.com.
