The funniest thing you’ll see all week is the moment CBS Mornings content creator Gayle King found out the lone juror in the Lindsay Clancy trial who wouldn’t vote to acquit, resulting in a mistrial, was a black man. She nearly needed smelling salts.
In an interview Friday, Paula Devlin, one of the witches on the jury who did vote to acquit Clancy of murdering her three children by reason of insanity, was asked by King to describe the demographics of her co-jurors. She said they ranged in age from their early 20s to “70-ish,” and, in that alien vernacular of self-conscious Democrats, she said there was just “one person of color.” The rest of the jurors, Devlin said, were white.
Knowing how this was probably going to end, a cautious King proceeded to ask, “Was the person of color a woman or a man?” He was a man, Devlin said. You could almost hear the ominous saxophone-led soundtrack from early ’90s TV dramas growing louder.
“Is the holdout juror a person of — a black man?” asked King in near disbelief. Devlin said he was. King asked again, to be sure. “A black man is the holdout juror?” Yes, Devlin said, looking every bit as dismayed as King.
“Whoa,” said King, who was fortunately seated safely in a large cushioned chair, lest she had face planted. “I have to sit with that for just a second.”
I can’t say with absolute certainty why King had to “sit with that for just a second,” but recent events related to the Clancy case and the ultimate ruling of a mistrial offer some interesting clues.
First, this lone black male juror is the one whose peers in the trial complained in a note to the judge that he wasn’t following instructions by the court with regard to “reasonable doubt,” suggesting that the juror was either unwilling or unable to do his duty. In essence, a room full of white people, ready to excuse a white woman for strangling her three young children, had grown frustrated with a black man who wouldn’t conform and also excuse Clancy.
Second, Clancy’s defense aggressively pleaded that the judge remove the one black man — the only “person of color” — from the otherwise all-white jury pool because he wasn’t following along with what the white jurors had decided. What they had decided was to absolve a woman of responsibility for professing to have killed her own kids. You might say Clancy’s defense tried to win the case through nullification.
Third, after the judge declared a mistrial, several of the other white jurors publicly disparaged the holdout. Devlin, the same one interviewed by Gayle King, called him “very arrogant.” Another juror, Kellie Farina, faulted the single black juror for not “getting over the fact that Lindsay viciously killed her children.” (To be sure, Farina said he “had the hardest time getting over [it].”)
Yet another juror, Nick Dargie, complained with a straight face that the holdout wouldn’t “show us evidence or … witness testimony that helped to prove what he was saying.” (Presumably pointing to the three dead children who Clancy admits to killing by wrapping rubber exercise bands around their necks wasn’t enough “evidence” for the holdout juror to “prove what he was saying” to the others.)
This might account for at least some of the reason Gayle King needed to “sit with that for just a second” when she found out that the holdout was a black man. For some people, it’s a lot to take in. Namely, white witches and warlocks who excuse the murder of children.
