The Lindsay Clancy Case: Everything That Led to the 11-1 Mistrial & Everyone's Reaction

Rotten Mango

This episode explores the intense jury deliberations in the Lindsay Clancy case, focusing on the 11-1 deadlock that led to a mistrial and the extreme psychological pressure within

Key takeaways

• Jury deliberation rooms can become high-stress environments leading to emotional breakdowns, threats, and even physical altercations.
• The 11-1 deadlock in the Lindsay Clancy case reflects deep division over whether she was guilty or suffering from severe mental illness.

Main topics

• Jury deliberation stress and dysfunction
• Lindsay Clancy trial: guilt vs. insanity defense

Notable quotes

"The atmosphere in the jury room has turned poisonous. Deliberations are irreparably compromised."

"I am being intimidated, threatened, screamed at. I need a police escort out of here."

Conclusion

The Lindsay Clancy trial remains deeply polarizing, not only in the courtroom but also online. The mistrial underscores

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:02) I Speaker 1 (0:02) would bet at least one full dollar that I will not make it into a jury deliberation room for the foreseeable future. But I imagine that it's akin to being a hostage in a bank heist. You have strangers cramped into a stale room day after day. The tension keeps building. And once in a while, you can send a note out. One note to a judge on a drug case reads, tension is high. Nerves are frayed. All minds are not sound. Then five minutes later, another juror from that same deliberation room sends another note that they think jury duty is worse than a prison sentence because at least someone in prison gets three meals a day and a free education. Jury rage and distress is very real and it's kind of scary to think about it. Justice will be dictated by people who are getting exhausted and are quickly heading towards distress. One New York court officer says they had to break up a fist fight before and once they heard jurors screaming so loudly at each other that other floors of the courthouse could hear. that jury. It has gotten a lot better. There's a lot more thought going into how to make the process smoother for jurors. Some courts give out booklets on how to debate while being courteous. Other courts are focused on how to make jurors feel more physically comfortable to help with any distress they may feel. So bigger deliberation rooms, better food, better snacks. But jury tension is, oh, apparently some courthouses even put the nicest clerks to deal with the jurors. Because they don't Speaker 2 (1:28) want Speaker 1 (1:28) your... The Speaker 2 (1:28) most patient Speaker 1 (1:28) one? Yeah, the most patient one, the most accommodating, the kindest ones. Speaker 2 (1:32) So like when they're deliberating, there's nobody else in the room, right? No. Except 12 of them, I see. Speaker 1 (1:37) You have the court officers outside. Speaker 2 (1:39) Outside, but not inside. Do they get paid? Speaker 1 (1:42) No. Well, some trials you do. Oh. But it's like $40 a day, I think. It's for travel and food. But no, you don't get paid. It's not like paid time off, right? Speaker 2 (1:53) Right, right, right. And it's Speaker 1 (1:53) not time off, but yeah. Speaker 2 (1:55) Jury Speaker 1 (1:55) attention is unavoidable during deliberations, especially when it's not a unanimous front from the beginning. That's why notes keep getting sent. One note to a judge unrelated to this case reads, the atmosphere in the jury room has turned poisonous. Deliberations are irreparably compromised. Another note reads, one juror is not participating at all in the deliberation process and sleeps most of the time. Can something be done with this situation? For one trial, there was one holdout juror, meaning everybody else agreed except this one individual. The rest of the jurors insulted the holdout, threatened them, and then eventually resorted to the completely legal and logical route of chucking a chair at the holdout. They missed, and I don't know if this is... the fact that they missed, but the chair thrower immediately apologized to the holdout juror, but another juror, unhappy, still threatened to punch the holdout. Yeah, okay, side note, the holdout wanted to hold a pharmaceutical company liable for knowing about the effects of one of their drugs and not putting the warnings on the labels. Speaker 2 (2:54) Yeah. Speaker 1 (2:55) Yeah, but the other 11 did not want to hold them liable. And that was like a whole thing. She had to write a letter to the judge inside the courthouse, inside the jury deliberation room, like some sort of bank heist hostage. And she wrote, I am being intimidated, threatened, screamed at. I need a police escort out of here. I'm afraid to come back. I cannot in good conscience vote for a case because of threats. Which is arguably more admirable than another group of jurors that decided that they were just going to flip a coin to see if they could convict a man for killing his girlfriend. Now, to be fair, that coin flip was not between guilty and not guilty. That coin flip was between murder and manslaughter. But it landed on murder. It did not stick, though. The judge had to declare a mistrial after finding out about the coin toss. The jurors were confused why that verdict was thrown out. They said, well, we were going to be a hung jury anyway, so we thought, what do we have to lose? Speaker 2 (3:46) If someone Speaker 1 (3:46) is deciding my fate with a coin, it better at least be a fucking quarter. For one of the Bill Cosby trials, tensions were so high that a male juror punched a concrete wall. Another juror said, I think he broke his pinky knuckle. If we kept going, there definitely was going to be a fight. They had five sheriff's deputies at the door and they could hear us and they kept coming in because they thought we were already fighting. Also, the room was so small for those deliberations, the jurors said we were losing our goddamn minds. One juror says people couldn't even pace. They were literally just walking in circles where they were standing because we were losing our minds. People would just start crying out of nowhere. We wouldn't even be talking about the case and people would just start crying. Speaker 1 (4:23) One juror says the best way to describe being trapped in a jury deliberation room where people are not agreeing is you're locked in a room with a banana and a nut and you got to get out of there. It's not very comforting news. And recently, the topic of jury deliberations and the tension inside those rooms has become a national topic, all because of Lindsay Clancy's highly publicized trial. Many of the jurors have come out since to publicly give almost tell-alls, if you will, of everything that has transpired inside that jury deliberation room. Jurors are describing the sharpness of the knife that they wanted to re-examine during deliberations. Jurors from that trial are describing how one of the jurors took the murder weapon, if you will, an exercise band, and wrapped it around a water bottle. Speaker 2 (5:10) What knife? Speaker 1 (5:11) There was a knife used to make the wounds on, yes. Now, the Internet more or less has been doxing certain jurors as well as digging up criminal history, criminal backgrounds, wondering if they lied to get on this jury. Every one of the jurors personal lives has become an important factor for the Internet. The jurors for Lindsay Clancy's trial were deadlocked 11 to 1, resulting in a mistrial. Jurors have come out. publicly talking about that one holdout juror. And the internet has doxed that holdout with very strong opinions on whether this holdout is a villain or a hero. And with that, there's so many questions that still remain. Is there going to be a second trial? What will the new jurors decide then? Exactly what during the trial led the jurors to be so dead set in their positions that they refused to budge? And that's just the trial side of things. There's also the internet side of things where it's not just a debate about whether or not Lindsay Clancy should be found guilty, not guilty, not guilty by reason of insanity, but everyone digging into the judge's family tree, theories about other parties that were potentially involved, people looking into property deeds and titles to find something suspicious. This is part one of a multi-part series digging into the case of Lindsay Clancy. We watched every single second of trial. We tried to sift through all the social media discourse to give you an easy-to-understand compiled version of events and online conversations. We're covering the trial, the online theories, the infamous Bratz doll video, the recently dubbed Patrick Did It theories, and all of the social media investigations occurring within this case. So with that being said... Speaker 1 (7:07) We would like to thank today's sponsors who have made it possible for Rotten Mingo to support Postpartum Support International. Their mission is dedicated to promoting awareness, prevention, and treatment of mental health issues related to childbearing in every country worldwide. This episode's partnerships have also made it possible to support Rotten Mingo's team of dedicated researchers. And we'd also like to thank you guys for your continued support. As always, full show notes are available at RottenMingoPodcast.com. This case has really heavy themes of mental health conditions like postpartum depression, psychosis. However, the details of the case are not representative of these particular diagnoses and no generalizations should be made from this case about these conditions. There are mentions of self-exit and taking the lives of others, particularly children and infants. We may mention various opinions, speculations, comments, all from the public about this case. These are not representative of our own and nor are they legally confirmed. Everything we use in research for this case is publicly available information. So please keep in mind that statements, quotes, maybe summarize condensed or shortened for brevity. This will be a multi-part series and there might be... individual additional disclaimers but there's a lot to disclaim in this case and one thing that i will say is certain people who have been reacting to this case have lost all nuance i don't know what has happened but it's almost become if you even point out something about one party or the other party that must mean by default that you believe the opposite thing to be true in this we're just pointing out everything that we noticed and that the internet has noticed throughout the trial and throughout this case unfolding online. But for now, please watch with discretion, take care, and let's get into it. South Shore Hospital in Massachusetts is a level 2 trauma center, which means they do 24-7 trauma surgery. So you have access to neurosurgery, orthopedics, anesthesia, radiology, emergency medicine, intensive care. They can care for very serious life-threatening injuries. They treat most major trauma. The only higher ranking for a trauma center would be a level 1 trauma center. which is comprehensive care for every aspect of injury with the greatest specialist depth. Side note, this isn't really like a safety rating or anything. It's just a matter of resources. So just to simplify, if you need band-aids for your wound, a level one trauma center may have a lot more band-aids stocked, but you're still going to get the same band-aid. They're not going to give you more or a better band-aid than the one you need. They just have it if you need it. So again, not a safety rating, if you will. But Lindsay Clancy is wheeled into South Shore Hospital, January 24th, 2023. She's wearing tank top, jeans, socks, no shoes. She's got multiple lacerations, so cuts on her wrists and her neck. They're not deep enough to require surgical intervention. The cuts themselves would not be categorized as fatal, obviously. However, that's not why she's even in the ER. She has severe spinal injuries. A C1 burst fracture, otherwise known as a Jefferson fracture. The C1 is the top part of the spine where the skull, the base of the skull sits at. And it's almost kind of like a rounded part. And a burst fracture means that it's not just like cracked in half. It's basically exploded. It's burst and it typically happens when a heavy load comes straight down through the top of the head. So the skull's base is connected to the C1 and because of that pressure, the load on the top of the head, it fractures the C1. A Jefferson fracture, most commonly, I mean, some ways to describe it is if you dive into shallow water and the top of your head hits the bottom of the pool. If you fall landing on your head or in a car accident, if the car rolls and your head bumps the roof of the car while you're upside down, I guess. Those are, you know, the more common ways to get a Jefferson fracture. Speaker 2 (10:57) Why is it Speaker 1 (10:57) called Speaker 2 (10:57) Jefferson? Speaker 1 (10:59) I actually have no clue. Now, that's actually not the most severe injury Lindsay comes in with. She has her T5 and T6 of her spine is shattered. It's a three column fracture, meaning the front, middle and the back of the bone are all broken. It's akin to having a chair and you saw through the four legs. Like nothing is holding the spine up anymore. This requires surgery to make the spine stable, but it does not repair the spinal cord. Nothing can really. repair a spinal cord for injuries like that where it's a three column fracture. The cord damage is done at the time of injury, which means there will most likely be no movement and no feeling below the level of the damage. So at T5, that typically means arms and hands will be fine. Trunk and stomach muscles will most likely be paralyzed. Legs will probably be paralyzed. Typically, you will lose bladder and bowel control, no sexual function. And this is typical. So this is not the end all be all, but 92 out of 100 people who have these fractures at that part of the spine never walk independently again. But it's not 100 out of 100, right? Speaker 2 (12:08) So we're saying like 90 % chance Lindsay's even like bowel tromp movement are not... Speaker 1 (12:16) Well, that is harder to say, but she probably will not walk independently. Speaker 2 (12:20) Right, right. But even like her bodily... Speaker 1 (12:23) Now, those are the biggest injuries. And that's not the full extent. There's a whole slew of spinal injuries, all of which seem to have contributed to Lindsay ending up paralyzed in a wheelchair. She also had 30 cc's of fluid coming out of her nose, which is about two tablespoons. The emergency personnel believed that could be CSF fluid, spinal fluid. She also had an alarming body temperature at 82.1 degrees Fahrenheit, which is dangerously low and it has become a very crucial part of this case, at least in terms of internet discourse. This 82.1 degrees Fahrenheit, just wait for the upcoming episodes because the amount of times I'm going to say 82.1 degrees Fahrenheit is astronomical. Hypothermia starts at below 95 degrees. Once you start hitting below 89 degrees, you usually have increased impaired consciousness, slow breathing, pulse, reduced shivering, and below 86 degrees, hypothermia-induced cardiac arrest becomes a major concern. And usually, once you start dipping below that 82 degree mark, most patients are unconscious, no longer shivering, and could be heading into severe, profound hypothermia territory, which would be survivable, but you really can't predict any long-term effects of being at that low body temperature, so it's tricky. The extent of the injuries and the different types of injuries is puzzling when Lindsay is brought into South Shore. She has cuts on her wrist and neck. She has... major spinal issues, injuries. She wasn't in a car crash. And even if she was, it wouldn't explain the cuts or the fact that she's at such a low, dangerously low core body temperature. She's not in a profession that would explain it either. Not that I think that there would be one, but she used to be a nurse. She was a labor and delivery nurse at Mass General Hospital, where she would even keep these detailed notes of the very first deliveries that she ever assisted with. The first entry reads, May 11th, 2015. Spontaneous labor. Admitted, admission epidural, no augmentation, pushed five minutes, Cora. So Cora is the first baby that she helped deliver, which she named the oldest of her three kids, Cora, after the first baby she helped deliver. So what the hell happened? She's a mom of three. She's got three kids, former labor and delivery nurse. The whole family lives in Duxbury, Massachusetts, which some locals have nicknamed Deluxe Berry. It's a very high-end community. So to be in this physical condition that Lindsay has brought in, clearly something very bad happened. She has to be med flighted. South Shore is a level two trauma center. She has to be med flighted to Boston's Brigham and Women's, a level one trauma center.