Michael P. Desronvil, the lone holdout juror who forced a mistrial in the Lindsay Clancy murder case, says he had "no doubts" about Clancy's guilt, and claims fellow jurors acted like political activists bent on acquittal.

Desronvil, 48, of Bridgewater, Massachusetts, issued a written statement to NewsNation on Thursday, his first public words since the September 3 mistrial that left the case of a mother who killed her three young children in legal limbo. His newly retained attorney, Edward Paltzik, who has previously represented former President Donald Trump, posted a separate statement on X the same day, calling his client "an American Hero and Champion of Justice" and confirming Desronvil had fled to a secure, undisclosed location in rural northern New England.

The statements land after weeks of intense public backlash. All eleven of Desronvil's co-jurors blamed him for the deadlock. A controversial true-crime blogger known as "Turtleboy" exposed his name publicly. And the New York Post reported that his family, friends, and neighbors have faced harassment since the mistrial, with his brother telling the paper, "Everyone thinks I'm Michael, I'm not Michael."

Desronvil says evidence proved Clancy "knew exactly what she was doing"

In his statement, Desronvil directly contradicted the account given by his fellow jurors, several of whom alleged he privately admitted to having doubts about Clancy's sanity but still refused to vote not guilty by reason of insanity. The Washington Examiner reported that multiple jurors came forward with that accusation.

Desronvil rejected it flatly:

"I didn't have any doubts. As I tried to explain different possible theories during deliberation, I kept getting cut off as if I had doubts based on the evidence present."

He went further, saying the prosecution's case was strong enough to convict:

"Based on all the physical evidence, key witnesses, and what the prosecution presents, I thought it was enough proof that she knew exactly what she was doing and planned."

Lindsay Clancy, 36, admitted to killing her three children, Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, 8 months old, inside her Duxbury, Massachusetts, home in 2023 before attempting to take her own life. Her defense argued she was suffering a severe episode of postpartum depression, dangerously worsened by a cocktail of prescribed medications. The six-week trial ended when the jury deadlocked and Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial after three separate deadlock announcements.

Eleven jurors were prepared to acquit Clancy on insanity grounds. Desronvil stood alone.

Eight jurors leaned "not guilty" from day one, YouTuber says holdout told him

Before Desronvil's own statement went public, a YouTuber named Ray Marcel had already offered a window into the holdout juror's thinking. Marcel, who runs a channel called "Fugitive TV," posted a video on Tuesday recounting what he described as an hour-long, off-camera interview with Desronvil. Paltzik confirmed Marcel was acting as a representative on Desronvil's behalf.

Marcel's account painted a picture of a jury room where the outcome was nearly predetermined. Breitbart reported Marcel as saying that from day one of deliberations, eight jurors favored acquittal, two favored guilty, and two were undecided. The jury deliberated for more than 38 hours across a week before the judge pulled the plug.

Marcel said Desronvil characterized those eight jurors in blunt terms:

"He felt like they were activists is what he told me."

Marcel also said Desronvil believes his race and politics made him a target. "He's a Republican. He is a black Republican. He has conservative views," Marcel recounted. "He believes he might be getting targeted because of that, because the media and the reporters, as you would see, they kind of have left views."

That claim, that a Black conservative juror was singled out for public fury because he refused to go along with a liberal-leaning panel, is Desronvil's own framing, delivered through a YouTuber intermediary. It has not been independently verified. But the backlash he describes is real. His family says they have been harassed. He has left the state. And Judge Sullivan moved on Monday to indefinitely block public release of all juror names, a step that came too late for Desronvil, whose identity was already exposed.

Paltzik calls Desronvil a "devoted father", but his record tells a more complicated story

Paltzik's statement on X leaned heavily into praise. He described Desronvil as "a devoted father and man of God" and asked the public to pray for his client's safety. Without naming Desronvil directly, Paltzik wrote:

"This American Hero and Champion of Justice loves the United States of America as the greatest country in the world; cherishes our sacred Constitution as the pinnacle of human liberty; and supports our amazing leader, President Donald J. Trump, as a fellow defender of common-sense, liberty, and sanity."

That portrait sits uneasily alongside Desronvil's own legal history, which emerged in the days after his identity became public.

In 2021, Desronvil was arrested on allegations that he choked his then-wife while their infant was crying and threw her into furniture. His nephew, then 13 years old, frantically called police. Police records show Desronvil's own mother shouted "You're evil" at her son as he was taken to jail. The charges were later dismissed. AP News reported that his now ex-wife declined to testify, reportedly for fear of losing child custody.

Then in 2025, Desronvil was accused of battering the same nephew, allegedly shouting, "You ruined my [expletive] life" and "You've had this coming your way for a long time." A restraining order resulted from that incident, and it was still active when Desronvil was seated on the Clancy jury.

He was also under eviction proceedings at the time of jury selection, after allegedly failing to pay roughly $12,000 in rent over a period of months, NBC Boston reported. Those details have raised pointed questions about how Desronvil passed the jury vetting process, questions that remain unanswered.

Desronvil's brother told the Post that the family had been "completely blindsided" by the attention and that no one had spoken to Desronvil since the alleged 2025 attack on his nephew. He also pushed back on the idea that religion drove Desronvil's stance in the jury room: "I don't think religion had anything to do with it."

Desronvil's new wife told his mechanic they planned to "lay low"

Desronvil, the son of Haitian immigrants who settled in Massachusetts in 1982, had been working in pest control before the trial, neighbors and acquaintances told the Post. He recently remarried. His local mechanic told the paper that Desronvil's new wife stopped by to have new wheels put on her car shortly before the couple left town.

"She said the media has been crazy and they're gonna lay low for a while," the mechanic said.

Paltzik confirmed Desronvil is now "safe and sound at an undisclosed secure location in a rural area of Northern New England." The Fox News report on the matter noted Desronvil is represented by Paltzik and that his public statement directly contradicts his co-jurors' version of events.

The next court hearing in the Clancy case is set for September 29. The mistrial has put the Plymouth County district attorney in difficult territory on the question of whether to retry Clancy or negotiate a plea deal.

Meanwhile, Clancy's own attorney has taken the extraordinary step of asking President Trump for a pardon, a request Trump has no legal authority to grant in a state murder case.

Jury vetting failures demand answers before any retrial

Whatever one makes of Desronvil's claim that he was railroaded by activist jurors, the facts around his own background raise a separate and serious problem. A man with an active restraining order, pending eviction proceedings, and a dismissed domestic violence arrest was seated on a jury weighing whether a mother who killed three children was criminally responsible for her actions. The defense, the prosecution, and the court all had a chance to screen him out. None did.

That failure belongs to the system, not just to one juror. The emotional weight of the Clancy trial, six weeks of testimony about three dead children, demanded a jury that could withstand scrutiny. This one could not.

Desronvil says he voted his conscience. Eleven jurors say he admitted doubt and refused to act on it. Both sides now have lawyers and cameras. The public has a dead jury and no verdict.

Three children are still dead. Their mother's fate is still unresolved. And the one institution that was supposed to deliver an answer, a jury of twelve citizens, failed before deliberations even began, because nobody bothered to check who was sitting in the box.