Lindsay Clancy’s defense is asking a Massachusetts judge to investigate the lone juror who blocked an insanity acquittal.
Attorney Kevin Reddington filed the motion Friday, requesting what he described as a “limited inquiry” into the holdout juror’s conduct.
Reddington wants Sullivan to preserve questionnaires for all 12 jurors and six alternates from Clancy’s murder trial.
He also requested cellphone sign-in sheets and courthouse hallway surveillance video from outside the jury deliberation room.
The defense specifically wants records showing calls or texts made by holdout juror Michael Desronvil during deliberation hours.
Reddington requested activity between roughly 8 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. on each day the jury deliberated.
Massachusetts prohibits jurors from using cellphones during deliberations, making outside communication significant to the defense challenge.
The motion asks the court to investigate whether Desronvil completed his confidential questionnaire truthfully before the court selected him.
The filing asks whether Desronvil was involved in cases handled by the Plymouth County District Attorney’s Office since 2021.
Reports after the mistrial revealed Desronvil previously faced a domestic violence charge that was later dismissed.
He also reportedly had an active civil restraining order when selected for the jury, raising questions about disclosure.
Those facts do not establish juror misconduct, and Desronvil has not been accused of wrongdoing during his service.
Reddington wrote that the proposed inquiry “will not touch on the substance of deliberations,” focusing instead on outside conduct.
🚨 NOW: Lindsay Clancy holdout juror Michael Desronvil is having to DEFEND HIMSELF against a WITCH HUNT by defense attorney Reddington, who is trying to SUBPOENA his phone records and have him questioned for “lying under oath”
This is OUTRAGEOUS!
Straight-up character… pic.twitter.com/9aXJ1GsoRV
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) September 22, 2026
The defense also cited another juror’s allegation that Desronvil scrolled on his cellphone during deliberations.
Clancy’s trial ended September 4 after jurors repeatedly told Sullivan they could not reach unanimity.
The panel split 11-1, with eleven jurors prepared to find Clancy not criminally responsible because of mental illness.
Desronvil was the lone holdout, siding with prosecutors who argued Clancy understood what she was doing.
Clancy, 36, admitted killing her children Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and eight-month-old Callan in January 2023.
The children were strangled inside the family’s Duxbury home before Clancy attempted suicide by jumping from an upstairs window.
Her defense argued she suffered from postpartum psychosis and was overmedicated when the three children were killed.
Prosecutors maintained the killings were committed by someone who understood the wrongfulness of her actions.
Desronvil rejected claims from fellow jurors that he admitted harboring reasonable doubt during deliberations.
“I didn’t have any doubts,” Desronvil said through attorney Edward Paltzik after his identity became publicly known.
He said other jurors kept cutting him off while he tried explaining alternative theories based on trial evidence.
Desronvil said “physical evidence, key witnesses, and what the prosecution presented” convinced him Clancy knew what she was doing.
He further stated there was enough proof that Clancy “knew exactly what she was doing and planned.”
Paltzik has mounted a fierce defense of Desronvil and condemned Reddington’s request for judicial scrutiny.
He called the motion “Looney Tunes” and described it as a “full-frontal attack” on the Constitution.
“If the new normal is that jurors are going to face brutal reprisals,” Paltzik warned in a statement.
He argued investigations of dissenting jurors could undermine independent deliberations and create retaliatory scrutiny after unpopular verdicts.
Paltzik called the defense motion “disgusting” and “worthy of nothing but universal condemnation.”
Reddington separately filed a motion seeking dismissal of Clancy’s charges rather than another murder trial.
That motion invokes double-jeopardy principles and argues there was no “manifest necessity” to declare a mistrial.
Prosecutors have not announced whether they intend to retry Clancy following the deadlocked jury and September mistrial.
Clancy remains charged with murder and is being held at a state psychiatric facility while the case remains unresolved.
Sullivan has not yet granted Reddington’s requested inquiry or ordered production of Desronvil’s cellphone records.
The judge is expected to consider the defense requests at the next scheduled court hearing on September 29.
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