There is something strange happening in the Lindsay Clancy trial that has nothing to do with whether she is guilty, innocent, mentally ill, criminally responsible, or anything else the jury has been asked to decide. It has to do with the jury itself. More specifically, it has to do with the fact that we can see them.
Not their deliberations, obviously. Nobody has installed a live camera in the jury room, although at the rate we’re going, give television producers another ten years. But these jurors leave the courthouse, go home, come back the next day, and walk through a world that has become absolutely fascinated with the case they are supposed to know nothing about except what they heard in court.
That seems like a problem to me. This isn’t a shoplifting case nobody has heard about. The Lindsay Clancy trial has received national television coverage, endless online discussion, social media commentary, and plenty of very passionate opinions. There have also been supporters outside the courthouse, which makes the usual instruction to ignore outside information considerably more interesting.
Don’t watch the news. Don’t read about the case. Don’t talk to anybody about it. Those instructions might have been followed by the jury. But they have to walk outside the courthouse every day and go home.
That’s the part I can’t get past. We have somehow created a system where we tell jurors not to expose themselves to outside influences and then release them every evening directly into the outside influences. It’s a little like telling somebody not to think about elephants and then making them walk through the elephant exhibit on their way home.
These jurors weren’t sequestered. Massachusetts doesn’t automatically require sequestration in a case like this. The decision is generally left to the judge, and there are very good reasons courts don’t like locking juries away in hotels for weeks at a time. It is expensive, disruptive, miserable for jurors, and probably not great for twelve people you’re hoping will remain calm and rational.
I get all of that. But if we’re going to have sequestration at all, what exactly are we saving it for? This is a nationally followed murder trial involving the deaths of three children, a mother accused of killing them, complicated questions involving mental health and criminal responsibility, and an enormous amount of public emotion. People aren’t casually discussing this case. They have picked sides.
Then it got even stranger. A Clancy supporter was arrested after allegedly filming jurors leaving the courthouse. She has pleaded not guilty, so I’m not interested in trying her case here either. But the incident itself illustrates the problem beautifully.
The jurors are visible. People know who they are. They know people know who they are. That last part matters.
You don’t need to secretly watch television coverage of your trial to feel outside pressure. If you walk out of the courthouse and see supporters, protesters, reporters, and cameras, congratulations, you’ve just received information from outside the courtroom. You might not know exactly what everybody is saying, but you certainly know everybody is saying something.
Now imagine being the one person disagreeing with eleven other jurors. We don’t publicly know which way the reported 11-1 division goes. We don’t know whether the lone juror favors Clancy or opposes her. We shouldn’t pretend we do.
But apparently one person is standing apart from eleven other people after days of deliberation. Maybe that person is absolutely right. Maybe the eleven are right. Maybe all twelve of them are honestly wrestling with a bizarrely difficult case and reasonable people have reached different conclusions.
That’s what juries are supposed to do. But here’s the question we shouldn’t have to ask. Has anything happening outside that courthouse affected what is happening inside the jury room?
I have no evidence that it has. That’s important. There is no reason to accuse any juror of watching television coverage, scrolling through Facebook, Googling Lindsay Clancy at two in the morning, or getting a secret briefing from Aunt Martha over meatloaf. The jurors have been instructed not to consume outside information, and unless evidence shows otherwise, they deserve the presumption that they followed those instructions.
But human beings are human beings. You can follow every instruction the judge gives you and still notice a crowd outside. You can avoid every television report and still see cameras pointed toward the courthouse. You can stay off social media and still realize that somebody was allegedly filming members of your jury. At that point, you know.
You know people care about your decision. You know people are watching. You know that whatever twelve people decide in that room is going to explode across television and the internet approximately seventeen seconds after the clerk reads it. How do you unknow that?
That’s why I keep coming back to sequestration. I’m not suggesting every jury should be locked inside a Holiday Inn until they produce a verdict. Nobody deserves that, including the Holiday Inn. Most trials don’t require anything remotely that drastic.
But this one? If the goal is to produce a verdict based exclusively on the evidence presented inside the courtroom, this seems like exactly the kind of case where separating the jury from the circus outside might have been worth the inconvenience.
Instead, we essentially operate on the honor system. Don’t look. Don’t listen. Don’t read. Don’t talk. See you tomorrow morning.
And maybe it worked perfectly. Maybe all twelve jurors have been extraordinarily disciplined. Maybe nothing from television, social media, friends, family, supporters, protesters, or the crowds surrounding this case has penetrated their deliberations at all. Maybe the disagreement we’re watching is exactly what it appears to be, twelve citizens taking an incredibly difficult responsibility seriously.
I genuinely hope that’s true. Because whether Lindsay Clancy is convicted or acquitted isn’t the issue I’m raising. If we’re going to ask twelve ordinary people to make an extraordinary decision while the entire country watches them walk in and out of the courthouse, maybe we should do a little more than tell them not to look around.
