INGERSOLL: Three Angry, Old Women Failed To Convince The Lone Juror

I might have mentioned this in previous State of the Days, but my favorite bit of Ingersoll genealogy is that I’m related to the guy who hosted the first ever witch trials … in a bar.

Lieutenant Nathaniel Ingersoll was a prominent local business owner, militia member, and church leader. Of the 20 women he either accused or testified against, eight were hanged.

There’s The Fates, The Grey Sisters, The Norns, and most popularly due to Shakespeare, The Weird Sisters, and then there’s the three batty crones who appeared on local television last night to complain incessantly about the one juror who refused to acquit Lindsay Clancy.

The three, who (ironically?) appeared on NBC and CBS Boston, made no attempt to mask their disgust of the prosecution and the lone male juror who refused to acquiesce to their appeals.

They accused the prosecution of lacking “compassion.” They said there was no “smoking gun” to prove Clancy’s guilt. They called the holdout juror “very arrogant” for not listening to the “nurses” in the room.

Yes, there were nurses in the room. Not that I want to digress, but some people are calling their reliance on external “expertise” cause for a mistrial. And to not digress further: About one third of nurses have some form of mental illness themselves!

Moving on … in the most disturbing clip of all, which simply must be watched, the three of them utterly lambast the holdout.

Here’s a transcript, emphasis mine (I’m withholding juror names, if you want to find them, it’s not difficult):

Juror 1: He had reasonable doubt. He admitted he had reasonable doubt after we watched that video of the interview. I think that’s when it was. He admitted he had reasonable doubt, and I started filling out the forms. I was so excited. There were three forms I had to fill out, and I started filling them out. I wrote my signature on each one, and then he said, “But I’m still not going to say that she’s not guilty by reason of insanity.”

He was very arrogant. He really did not take anything that anybody said. He tried to ask a question about the medications, and we went back to the report from South Shore Hospital. We had the toxicology report. We could see exactly the amounts. The nurses in the room spoke to that. That was a question that he had. And he just completely disregarded the information that they gave him.

I’m not sure if “rogue” is the right word. But every one of us, in the hours of our frustration, would get up and walk the room, because you just couldn’t sit anymore, and would all go to the cart with the exhibits. He, I think, got up to the cart once, very briefly, and went back to his seat. He would not interact with us and try to understand.

We read to him on numerous occasions the definition of reasonable doubt from Judge Sullivan’s instruction. He actually said one day in the end, “Well, why don’t we have the judge come in and read it again?” And we were like, “No. We have it in front of us. We don’t need that.” And we would highlight it — this is the definition of reasonable doubt. But he had the hardest time getting off the fact that Lindsay viciously killed her children.

I genuinely had to do a double take when I read that last portion. He couldn’t get past “the fact that Lindsay viciously killed her children.”

(Also, I’m not sure what exactly the third one is on, but her speech was slurred enough to call for a roadside test.)

We’ve also got the rapidly infamous “no smoking gun” assertion from a fourth juror who (wisely) chose to stay anonymous.

But she also recounted how she’d essentially been bullied into an acquittal despite her initial intuition.

A majority of the people — it doesn’t matter what side it was on — was very firm in their stance and their beliefs kind of from the beginning. This standalone juror was not the only one that was unwilling to see things from the other side. So I’m going to kind of defend that individual in a sense. There were some big personalities in that room. But at the end of the day, it just came down to an inability to move past your convictions. And even after that dynamite charge, to be unable to self-analyze yourself and be like, ‘Okay, am I missing something? Am I failing to acknowledge or give this doubt the weight that it needs?’ That majority of the room was trying to sway that person from the very beginning.

Originally I felt as though she was guilty and she was criminally responsible for it. And maybe I still believe that in a certain way. I think that this was a woman who was not mentally healthy. She was someone that was in the throes of a significant mental health crisis. I really just felt like she was so deep in it that she couldn’t see her way out. And this was the only option.

… what an evolution of the term. From “ugly, withered or unpleasant” to “wise and respected post-menopausal woman.”

I had an interesting jury duty experience when I was younger. (I will preface this anecdote by stressing that I used to be all in on the civic duty aspect of jury duty.)

When I got out of the Navy, I got called that fall for Jury Duty. I went and did my duty. Then, three years later, I got called again. And then I got called again. And again.

Turns out in my state, every three years you become eligible for jury duty. And was starting to get pretty irritated by it. Especially since NOBODY I knew, and I had a large circle of friends, had been called even once.

I got called in 1979, 1982, 1985, and 1988.

When I got called in 1988, I was fit to be tied. But I went. It was the only time I got picked to be on a jury, and it was for an older woman arrested for drunk driving.

Then, there was a hiatus.

That lasted until 1998, when I got called for Federal Jury Duty, but...I didn’t get picked. They notified me that I didn’t have to report on the day I was supposed to go in. (People told me all kinds of horror stories about Federal Jury Duty)

Then, in 2002, I was called for Jury Duty again.

Boy, was I steaming mad. I went in and decided I was going to act out in some way. There were at least a hundred people reporting on that day, and we were broken up into smaller groups that were each individually managed by some minor court official as we filled out our paperwork. When we had to fill out our forms, I filled it out in a completely illegible manner, I was boiling mad. The Bailiff called out my name and made me fill it out again.

Then, we all filed into the huge courtroom. I think it was one of those open courtrooms that has a bunch of different areas where legal processes can go on at the same time, and they explained to us that there was going to be an important case and they needed to explain it to us.

It was about two brothers who got pulled over by the State Police and had unlicensed weapons in their car. Then they asked anyone who had a problem sitting in a jury trial for this case to raise their hand.

I raised my hand immediately. They called me up to the bench in front of all these other jurors who watched this odd process curiously, the judge was sitting there in his black robe, and the District Attorney and the Defense Lawyer were there. The judge asked what my issue was. I completely lied, because I was so pissed, and said I didn’t trust the police. I would assume the State Police planted the weapons. (I didn’t really feel this way, but I was so angry I felt as if I could say nearly anything)

While I said this, I could see the Defense Attorney stroking his chin as he eyed me, and I imagined that if he had a thought bubble above his head, it would have said “How can I get this guy on the jury?”

The judge said “Well, if you can’t be impartial, we can dismiss you for today, but you will have to come back again.”

When he said that I did an immediate 180 and said “Fine. I can be impartial.” So I didn’t get picked that day.

Then, in 2002, I got ANOTHER jury duty notification, and I nearly had a stroke. I didn’t get picked, but as soon as I got home, I typed up a letter to the State Commissioner of Juries. I didn’t use profanity, but I was nearly apoplectic with rage at this decades long stupidity and imposition on me.

I was never called again after that.

I would go now, as I am now retired, and I am not “in demand” in my work the way I used to be, but...I think my Jury Duty days are over. I doubt I will get called again, and rightly so.

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