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Very meagre for a top-level comment, I know, but I felt it was worth sharing because it's peak culture war: it turns out the sole holdout in the Lindsay Clancy case was a Black man.
(For those living under a rock: Lindsay Clancy was the woman who killed her three young children, pleaded non guilty on the basis that she suffered from post partum psychosis, and the murder trial ended in a mistrial because only 1 out of 12 jury member found her guilty.)
I think this revelation will end the debate about whether the jury failed to reach the right verdict. Although ostensibly the discussion revolved around what level of proof was provided (Massachussets has an unusually low bar for insanity defenses, in that the prosecutor must prove that the defendant was capable of discerning right from wrong beyond reasonable doubt, rather than the defense proving their client was incapable at least to the level of preponderance of evidence, as is the case in most jurisdictions.)
In practice, the issue seemed to be mostly framed in terms of identity politics, along the lines of “mistrial caused by obstinate man who refused to listen to reasonable majority of mostly women”. Substitute “black man” and “white women” and this loses its cachet: suddenly it reads like a proud person of color bravely standing up against a group of Karens trying to browbeat him into submission.
I was considering a post on the jury subject, but you beat me to it. I was going to focus on the comments some of the jurors have made in interviews:
“Roni Carlson, a retired fifth-grade teacher, was the jury foreperson…said she'll attend the retrial if there is one, to support Clancy.”
“Juror Kellie Farina…said the holdout juror ‘had the hardest time getting off the fact that Lindsay viciously killed her children.’”
“I started filling out forms, I was so excited.”
I can’t find the exact comment, but one of them said that he would not take into account their wisdom from being nurses in teachers. Other jurors have said they felt intimidated and changed from guilty to not guilty.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2026/09/10/lindsay-clancy-jurors-reasonable-doubt-mistrial/91675679007/
https://nypost.com/2026/09/08/us-news/lindsay-clancy-jury-was-ready-to-find-her-not-guilty-of-murder-until-one-man-refused-to-agree-jurors-reveal-i-was-so-excited/
I mean. This is crazy, right? Do they know how this makes them sound?
Based on my recent jury experience, you need to account that ~50% of the jury just wants to GTFO and will happily agree with whatever the biggest plurality of outspoken jurors want.
And sometimes it's ten times worse!
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Yes? No?
I think they are doing what they believe will confer the most status on them in the in-group and uttering words that enrage the outgroup or befuddle normies is an added bonus in that case.
But its crazy how this has been a series of recursively nesting scissor statements from the jump.
Likewise, its the apotheosis of the Progressive project: women exercising civic authority to serve on a jury, fully autonomous agents able to exercise their own will over others... completely swayed by the argument that women's emotional and mental instability renders them immune from accountability and punishment, and yet having their goals thwarted by a black guy, where the black guy is actually in favor of 'lynching' the white woman, for reasons thus far known only to him.
And history's Supervillain, the Old White Male Attorney suddenly cast as the feminist icon in the drama. The innocent woman saved by the very type of person who used to be her worst oppressor. A hero.
Except, not so much. Love the timing on this drop.
The Simulation masters have a twisted sense of humor, but its A+ writing. Expectations subverted at every turn.
How common are those kind of misconduct complaints? I can imagine it's not that rare for people who lose big cases to try and blame the lawyer and accuse them of being the "real" bad guy.
For a long-practicing criminal law attorneys I'm sure they face many over their career.
However the stage it appears to have moved to, where the initial investigation is found to be at least credible enough to merit possible discipline, is rarer.
Sometimes happens when long-practicing attorneys lose a step or two, at least in their administrative practices, and slip up in a critical way that they wouldn't have before.
I have little insight into the merits of the claim but from the professional-ethical standpoint they're fairly 'serious' in nature.
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Similar to med mal. Being wrongly sued for malpractice is something of an initiation ceremony for attorneys. Usually it's an argument over the bill. The client claims you overcharged, you present your timesheets showing you didnt, and you agree to take a haircut to avoid getting the courts involved and raising your insurance premiums.
Here, considering the allegations regard a dispute over fees in the context of a corrupt politician trying to get his conviction thrown out, my iniital impression is that the lawsuit is probably not meritorious. I certainly trust the attorney more than his client, absent further details.
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My understanding, admittedly second-hand, is that more than one of the female jurors have admitted on camera to arguing their position based on their own "expert opinion", ie based on evidence that was not actually admitted in the trial proper, and that this is in fact serious misconduct. Can anyone else shed more light on this aspect?
It is most likely not misconduct at all, and certainly not serious misconduct. The jury instructions include, "when deciding whether to believe a witness and how much importance to give a witness's testimony, you must look at all the evidence, drawing on your own common sense and experience of life." If someone is a nurse, and they think that gives them special insight as to which side's psychiatric expert to trust, that's fair game.
This is true but it does not allow you to interpret toxicology reports which some claim they did.
If the toxicology reports are in evidence, any consideration a juror makes of them is "interpretation". It would only be misconduct if they got the toxicology reports from outside the courtroom.
The misconduct is saying "my interpretation is better than yours because I'm a nurse."
You're allowed to bring your expertise and life experience to the jury room.
You're not allowed to countermand sworn testimony by relying on your "experience" though. And no, "expertise" isn't allowed, just general experiences. Doing so introduces unsworn testimony that the opposition has not had the opportunity to cross-examine.
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Really? If the alleged victim in a sexual assault claimed that the accused used his penis to do something impossible, like he shot bullets out of it, I'm not allowed to convey to the women on the jury that penises do not work that way?
That’s a bit different. It is common knowledge that penises don’t shoot bullets. But toxicology reports and their implications are not common knowledge.
The one juror put herself up as an expert but one that was not able to be cross examined.
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That kind of bullying is routine in jury deliberations and doesn't rise to misconduct that would void a verdict. I listed a few cases on the issue before when juries were discussed.
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The one that got me, was the male juror who thought wrapping one of the bands around a water bottle was beyond the pale, when the move seems clearly intemded to remind the othet 11 jurors that it was wrapped around the three children's necks.
https://www.the-sun.com/news/16981196/lindsay-clancy-holdout-juror-mimicked-strangling-kids-exericse-band/
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