A judge at Lindsay Clancy's murder trial declined on Thursday (September 3) to remove a juror her lawyer said was blocking a verdict, as the jury ended a sixth day of deliberations over whether the Massachusetts woman murdered her three young children.
"It's basically that there's a person who has doubt, but will not listen to the judge's instructions," Clancy's attorney Kevin Reddington told media when he left the courthouse.
"She has a right to know what's going on," Reddington, surrounded by media added.
The 12 jurors were dismissed and told to return on Friday (September 4) less than an hour after Judge William Sullivan in Plymouth, Massachusetts, received a note from the jury and re-instructed them on what would constitute "reasonable doubt."
The note was not read aloud in court. After jurors left the courtroom, defense lawyer Kevin Reddington moved to have one of them removed, saying the note from the jury's foreperson indicated "there's one juror who refuses to listen to the law that you've given him or her on reasonable doubt."
"If we come back here in half an hour with a mistrial because of a juror that has just spurned the instructions of this court, it's a shame," Reddington told the judge, who declined to remove the juror.
"I don't feel that it is proper for me to side with one side or the other of the deliberations," Sullivan said. "I don't feel it's appropriate for me to say I agree with one juror or the 11."
The jury had sent Sullivan notes on Tuesday and Wednesday saying they were unable to reach a unanimous decision. The judge instructed them on both days to continue deliberating.
If the jury does not reach a verdict and Sullivan declares a mistrial, prosecutors would need to decide whether to retry the case, which has included more than 80 witnesses and more than 300 exhibits.
Posted by: AAngeles NET25 NEWS
