Politics
Defense Attorney Publicly Blames Single Juror For Ruining Everyone's Friday
By BSN Staff, . BSN Network. Satire.
PLYMOUTH, MA. The jury in the Lindsay Clancy trial was dismissed early Thursday afternoon for the sixth time this week, after defense attorney Kevin Madigan stood before the court and did something legal analysts are calling either a bold tactical maneuver or a complete violation of the unwritten rules of being in a room with other people: he blamed one specific juror, by implication, for the fact that nobody can go home.
The jury, which sources confirm is split 11 to 1, will return Friday morning for what will be their seventh consecutive day of deliberations, a stretch of civic duty so long that at least two jurors have reportedly had to call their employers more than once with an excuse that sounds made up.
"It's a spurned juror," Madigan told the court, using a word that legal scholars say is not a recognized term of art in Massachusetts criminal procedure, but that everyone in the room understood immediately on a personal level.
The lone holdout has not been publicly identified, which legal experts say is appropriate, and which also means that all twelve jurors are currently going home each night knowing that eleven of their colleagues and their defendant's own lawyer have been talking about them in court.
"I just want to go back to my life," said one alternate juror who was dismissed weeks ago and has been following the proceedings on local news. "I feel like I got out of something. I don't know what. But I got out of it."
Court observers noted that publicly characterizing a deliberating juror as "spurned" in open session is the kind of move that sounds like it should be illegal, raises immediate questions about jury tampering, and is also the kind of thing that, once said, you absolutely cannot take back at a dinner party.
A spokesperson for the Plymouth County court system declined to comment on the specific characterization but issued a statement describing the situation as "an active deliberative process unfolding within the normal parameters of the judicial system's procedural framework," which a reporter read back slowly and confirmed meant nothing.
"There's a social contract in that room," said Dr. Patricia Ellmore, a jury behavior consultant who has never actually been inside a deliberation room but has opinions. "You go in, you listen, you maybe update your view. You do not become the reason everyone's spouse is annoyed at the judicial system for a second week."
Fellow jurors, who are forbidden from speaking publicly about deliberations, have nonetheless managed to communicate their general feelings through what courthouse sketch artists describe as "load-bearing body language."
The defendant's family released no statement. The holdout juror drove home Thursday afternoon in a car that, statistically speaking, eleven other people know the make and model of.
Court resumes Friday at nine a.m. Parking validation is not provided.
The story we are making fun of: https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/6070230-lindsay-clancy-defense-juror-deadlock-blame/