The lone jury holdout in the trial of Lindsay Clancy for strangling her three young children to death finally publicly responded after he became the target of many Clancy supporters, thanks in large part to criticism raised against him by fellow jurors and Clancy’s attorney, despite an order by the judge to seal the jury.
The trial ended in a mistrial earlier this month.
The juror, who identified himself as Michael Péguy Desronvil, has hired a lawyer to protect himself. In an interview with Fox News’s Kayleigh McEnany, Desronvil’s attorney, Edward Paltzik, refuted the jury forewoman’s claim that his client expressed doubts about Clancy’s guilt despite refusing to find her not guilty.
When McEnany asked if his client expressed any doubt, Paltzik answered, “Michael had zero doubt. No doubt.” She then asked if he had evidence to back up his position, with Paltzik responding, “A lot of evidence. A mountain of evidence.”
Paltzik observed that Kevin Reddington, Clancy’s attorney, was going after Desronvil, accusing him of being an “obstructionist juror” and that Reddington’s post-trial behavior and actions were setting a “nightmarish precedent.”
“If the new normal is that jurors are going to face brutal reprisals for disagreeing with a defense attorney, you can kiss the Sixth Amendment goodbye,” Paltzik warned on X. “That is the most outrageous thing I have ever heard in almost 20 years of practicing law. It is categorically false. You can’t investigate a juror because the juror followed the law and the evidence and came to a different conclusion than the one that you wanted, Kevin Reddington.”
Reddington has further moved to make all the jury notes and sidebar discussions public rather than impound them. Whether this would help or hinder Reddington’s allegations, the prosecution has rightly argued against it, noting that doing so would have a “chilling effect” on the public’s willingness to serve on future juries.
The Sixth Amendment guarantees “the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury.” If Reddington and the pro-Clancy mob now set the terms for the conclusion jurors are expected to reach, that is no longer an impartial jury.
Indeed, it would only further dissuade fair and independent-minded Americans from serving on juries for fear that, should their views fail to comport with public opinion, they could suffer not only public attacks but even threats of legal prosecution, as is the case with Desronvil.
Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley contends that Reddington’s targeting of Desronvil is “highly unusual.” Meanwhile, Paltzik is looking into filing a legal complaint against Reddington, arguing that he should be “suspended, disciplined, or even disbarred.”
Interestingly, during the trial, Reddington did not dispute the fact that Clancy admitted to killing her own children — five-year-old Cora, three-year-old Dawson, and eight-month-old Callan. However, now he’s arguing against a retrial, claiming that the prosecution failed to produce sufficient evidence that she even committed the crime. It’s as if Reddington has been swayed by Clancy’s social media fan club, who have spun wild conspiracy theories that reject her own admissions to murdering her children.
Reddington is making a mockery of the justice system in hopes of getting his client off the hook.
However, as Desronvil noted when he recently released a public statement, “I know the whole focus has been on me, but we want to reel everything back and put the focus on the three angels. The ones that can’t speak for themselves, the ones that can’t defend themselves, and the ones that can’t fight the battles — and those are Cora, Dawson, and Callan.”
Desronvil and his wife are in hiding because he dared to seek to hold to his convictions about the truth, despite media and public pressure. And his rationale for his determined stance is as telling as it is inspiring. “I want to thank God for my Catholic faith,” he explains, “I want to thank God for blessing me with the ability to love my daughter. And foremost, I would like to thank everyone, every individual, that has supported me throughout this difficult situation.”
Life matters, and those who murder others need to be held to account, a reality that Desronvil clearly took seriously. In fact, a justice system that rejects this most fundamental reality of right and wrong, good and evil, cannot be considered just.
