Trial Day 28 - Emergency Hearing with Supreme Judicial Court

0:00Full trial audio, everything hurting court, no silences to skip. I'm here. Oh, really? Okay. Good. Perfect. I'm sorry. This meeting is being recorded. We're jordered. I think you were on mute. Can you please call the case again? Yes, Your Honor. I have all parties on mute, please. And the only one party speaking at a time. We will have no commentary as well. Your Honor, may I call the case? Before the court is commonwealth versus, like, please. We have found anywhere. Can anybody hear this? I'm sorry. F. Can the parties hear the court, please? Yes. Thank you. Before the court, Your Honor, is commonwealth versus Lindsey Clancy,

1:01docket, S.J. 2026-042. Representing the commonwealth, we have Jennifer Spray, and representing the petitioner Lindsey Clancy, we have Kevin Reddington. Good afternoon, Your Honor. Dana Goldblatt. I'm sorry. Dana Goldblatt. One person at a time, please. Thank you. I have a question. I have a question. Can you please call the case? Yes. I have a question. Thank you. Any other questions? Sure. Idea of where we are. Yes, Your Honor. So on August 27th, the jury was sent out after closing arguments and instruction. On September 1st, they sent in a note saying that they were deadlocked. Judge Sullivan brought them back into the courtroom. And sent them out again to deliberate. The next day on September 2nd, they again sent out a note saying that they were deadlocked.

2:02Okay. After receiving that note, the judge brought the jurors back into the courtroom and gave them the two Rodriguez instruction. Okay. The next day, September 3rd, they sent in a note stating a member of the jury is unable to follow the instructions regarding reasonable doubt. How should we proceed? Judge Sullivan brought each juror to leave for an individual of Water Air and asked them to the note said a member of the jury is not able to follow the instructions on reasonable doubt. Okay. And said how should we proceed? So then Judge Sullivan brought them in for individual of Water Air asking each individual juror if they were still able to follow his instructions. Each juror answered in the affirmative that they were. The judge credited those answers and then brought the entire jury back into the courtroom together and re-instructed on reasonable doubt.

3:09Later that time. September 3rd. Correct. Okay. Later that day. And then later that day. Sorry. That's okay. That later that day, they sent in instruction. They sent another note. This one identified the juror. So I won't give the juror number. But it says that the juror has made statements acknowledging doubt. But refuses to apply it to the verdict as the law states. This is why we cannot come to a unanimous decision. Okay. And then after receiving that note, the judge sent the jurors home for the day. That brings us to today, September 4th. This morning the judge Sullivan. Sent the jurors out again to deliberate. And advise them or instructed them not to include any. And then they were still deadlocked. And they would not be able to reach a verdict based on their current state.

4:10One thing I did forget to mention that this morning prior to sending out the jurors, judge Sullivan instructed them that they required to be in court. And then they were still deadlocked. And they would not be able to reach a verdict based on their current state. And then they would not be able to reach a verdict based on their current state. Only by sending out the jurors, judge Sullivan instructed them that they are required to follow his instructions on the law, whether they agree with them or not. So after instructing them on that, he sent them out. They were out for a few hours. And then they returned that final note stating that they were deadlocked and would not be able to reach a verdict. Okay. And I'm sorry. he instructed them to not include something? Oh, that this morning, yes. So he instructed them not to include any information in any questions they may have about their deliberation or their account, what the numbers are were

5:13in terms of guilty, not guilty. That's not an exact quote, but that was the contents of what he told him this morning. And then at the same time, he also instructed them to follow the law, whether they agreed with it or not. Okay, thank you for that timeline. Attorney Reddington, this is your motion. I don't know if it's you or attorney Goldblatt, who will be speaking, but I will give you the opportunity now to address the specific issue of this particular timeline. Thank you, Rana. I will defer to attorney Goldblatt on this. Thank you, Judge Justice. I would just add that this morning on the fourth when before the judge gave the instruction to follow all his instructions, attorney Reddington on behalf of Ms. Clancy asked that the judge inquire of the jury individually

6:16through her dearer to determine whether this juror was following instructions. And the judge declined to do that. So that was when this petition was filed based on that. It was filed before the jury sent in their second, I guess their third notice of deadlock. So there's an intervening, the attorney Reddington requested an individual of our dear of the jurors, that request was denied. I filed this motion, the petition with attorney Reddington and then the jury came back after, sometime after I filed it, the jury came back saying they were in fact deadlocked. The goal was to avoid a mistrial by filing this and getting superintendents. I'm sorry, you filed this at 12.29. At 12.29, although I don't see that,

7:18I defer to you. Okay, and then afterwards, just like in the last hour, the jury came back with their final note. At some point I think it was after the file, I don't know because I was writing the filing, but when I sent in the filing, the jury had not come back with the final note and therefore you will not see that in the fact pattern. I don't know whether maybe the final note actually came back while I was writing the petition, but it came back. And so you won't see the mention of that final note in the facts of the petition because when I was writing it, it either hadn't happened yet or I didn't know about it because I'm in a different room than attorney Reddington while I'm writing this and he's in. I appreciate that. Okay, so in addition to what's in the emergency request for relief, is there any other argument that you have for me? No additional arguments, Judge. I'm available to obviously answer questions or to clarify. I think you're frozen. I can hear you though. Can you hear me? Something just happened.

8:19Yeah, something just happened. I'm glad. So we're back. Yeah. So I asked if you had additional argument and then either I froze or you froze. No additional argument. It's what's in the brief. It's the two arguments that are there. I think and in general, I would just frame it really briefly, one sentence as, I don't think there's a lot of doubt that this was error. The question is under what authority if any can the SJC intervene? And those are the two areas where I tried to outline it in the under section 211-3 and as a complaint from Andeamus. So those were my two, those are the two areas I'm trying to argue to the court to help the court. Okay. Attorney Sprague, do you have a response? Yes, Your Honor. Just a slight dispute in the timeline. The juror came back with the note saying they were deadlocked prior to 1230. Okay. If this was filed at 1230. And at that time, Judge Sullivan stated that he was going to declare a mistrial after arguments by council. At that time, Attorney Reddington did ask for an individual

9:20of our dare. Again, that was denied based on the wrong key case and that case line. Then Attorney Reddington stated that he was going to seek review of declaring a mistrial. So that's what I thought this was about, but we did receive the petition and we understand now that it's not based on the judge's authority to declare a mistrial, but rather on the for dare issue, which I think based on the timeline and the case law, this is covered under Commonwealth versus wrong key 491 Mass 284 from 2023, where we have nothing in these notes or anything from the deliberating jurors that indicate a lack of impartiality bias extraneous influence or inability to deliberate regarding this one juror, what we seem to have is a dispute amongst the deliberation, deliberating jurors as you how to apply the law, but that's their deliberation

10:21in which the judge I think correctly decided not to inquire into. And by questioning the jurors the prior day about whether they could follow the instructions and all of them saying yes and him, the Judge Sullivan crediting those statements, I think that it's a judicial discretion issue and the Judge Sullivan has discretion to not conduct the for dare and to issue a mistrial. Okay, I, unless Attorney Gopat, you have something else to say, I will take the matter under advisement. Thank you, I do, thank you for that. The statement that this was not, that this is just about deliberations or about a disagreement, I think is entirely refuted by the substance of the note in which the jurors report not, we disagree about conclusions, but this one juror is refusing to apply doubt as the law states.

11:22So the refusal to apply something as the law states is different than a problem with deliberation. So the juror is acknowledging some kind of doubt and then refusing to follow the instruction about it. And that is what, which is, I think, when they refer to refusing to follow the instruction, they just refer to it as refusing to follow what the law states. So this note that says, I'm not going to follow, this juror won't follow what the law states, I just want to clarify that that's different than we disagree about what constitutes reasonable or something like that, that there is a clear statement that this one juror is not following what the law states. And because of that, there is not discretion for the court to just let this continue. And that's where I think the issue comes in for the SJC's ability to issue an order, either under its general superintendents powers to preserve the integrity of the petty jury or of just the mandamus requiring the court

12:23to exercise this discretion, which requires at this point an inquiry or... I think I understand your argument. Although it was quick papers, it was good papers. And I understand the distinction that you're making. And at this point, I think I need to make a decision. So I will leave you make that decision and thank you very much for quickly getting on this call. Thank you. Thank you, I'm looking for a scoop.