'The baby killer and the holdout' by Vincent

 

Three innocent children have been murdered; that is the starting point, the ending point, and must never be allowed to be glossed over by a sick public fascination with their killer, Lindsay Clancy.  These children were not exhibits in a jury trial, or examples of a mother with mental illness, they were God’s gift to the world, and that narrative must not disappear from this horrific premeditated massacre.  They had names, personalities, they had fears and favorite things, but what they don’t have is a future that should have unfolded for decades to come.

As I watched the theatrics in disgust, both in the courtroom and outside its doors, one thing became prevalent; far too many in this nation have devalued life itself, and in some sick and distorted way, find themselves salivating in this satanic environment.  A society that becomes too comfortable explaining away the killing of children has lost something critical to its existence, its moral compass.  

The most vulnerable people in any society are those with the least amount of power to protect themselves.  Infant children cannot simply leave their home if they feel threatened.  They cannot call for help from someone that is supposed to love and protect them.  They depend on the adults in the room, and the entire ecosystem of institutions tasked to recognize danger, and to act in their behalf. 

The children deserve grief without qualification.  They deserve remembrance without a side bar.  Above all else, they deserve justice grounded in facts, not misguided sentimentality.  And yet, as so often happens in cases involving a mother killing her children, the conversation quickly becomes irrationally dominated by the emotional state of the mother; and juries rule on emotion, not evidence.  And that is exactly what almost happened in Plymouth Massachusetts Superior Court during Clancy’s trial.

After forty hours of deliberations, the jury came back unable to reach a unanimous verdict, therefore a mistrial was declared by the presiding judge.  It appears the jury’s deadlock was 11-1 to acquit Clancy due to temporary insanity.  Meaning at the time of methodically strangulating her three baby children in her basement, with three separate exercise bands she consciously purchased from Amazon, she could not understand what she was doing was a crime, despite sending her husband out to run errands so that he could not interfere with her carefully calculated plan. 

Let’s be clear about what a juror’s job is, and what it is not.  A juror is not there to win a popularity contest.  A juror is not there to make friends during deliberations.  And most importantly, a juror is not there to surrender his or her best judgment because eleven other people are tired, impatient, emotionally invested, or simply misguided.  And lastly,  he or she is certainly not there to be bullied by a tyranny of the majority. 

The justice system does not function properly when jurors treat deliberations like a group project where the goal is consensus at any cost.  It only functions properly when people are willing to think rationally and independently; and remove emotions from the equation and make decisions based on evidence.    

And that is exactly why the holdout juror in this case deserves our utmost gratitude and respect.  Standing alone is certainly not comfortable.  It is stressful, isolating and deeply unpleasant, especially under these circumstances.  It is far easier to tell yourself that the majority must be right, that the disagreement is not worth the tension; or that the majority is probably right, or perhaps others probably understand the evidence better than you do.  However, probably is not a legal standard. 

Each juror is expected to bring an independent mind into the room.  If every juror simply deferred to the loudest voice, or the prevailing emotional current, then why gather twelve jurors at all?  We could simply appoint one person with a gavel and call it judicial efficiency.  The entire point of a jury is that it must survive scrutiny from multiple people with multiple backgrounds; and disagreement is the system working exactly as designed.  The holdout juror did not fail by refusing to agree, he did his job; in fact, eventually when all is said and done, he may have done the most important part of all.   

The juror who stood alone demonstrated something increasingly rare; the courage to remain accountable to his own conscience.  He didn’t outsource his moral responsibility because the defendant was a mother.  He didn’t hide behind the comfort of group think because it would expedite things.  He did exactly what citizens are asked to do at this most serious and consequential moment, he held the ethical line and deserves our utmost respect and gratitude.   

Editorial comments expressed in this column are the sole opinion of the writer