The One Lone Juror
—for the very brave man who refused to acquit Lindsay Clancy
of the crime of murdering her three small children
You did not listen to the whines and pleas—
You did not let emotion blind your vision.
Like one small ship, storm-tossed on raging seas,
You held your course and rudder with precision.
How could you do otherwise? The rest
Were lemmings, governed by the monthly moon,
And by a lawyer’s rhetoric, his chest
Swollen to bursting, like a gas balloon.
They hungered to obey the current fashion—
To go along with what the neighbors think.
They confused cold murder with mad passion
And hoped to drag you to a cliffside brink
Where you’d fall off and join in with the circus
Of happy, sweet agreement with their lies.
Instead you answered “No one here can jerk us
Into a vote for something we despise.”
Of course, you’re now a target. Fairly quick,
Your name will be leaked out and then revenge
Will come to visit you, with every trick
Of nasty retribution, to avenge
The lost acquittal that the lemmings sought.
They’ll smear your name, harass your family.
You’ll learn that peace of mind is dearly bought
When once you cross left-wing society.
But what of that? They cannot touch your spirit,
Nor change your fixed decision, or what’s true.
Don’t second-guess, or wobble on a pivot,
And say that murder shouldn’t get its due.
You stood your ground, and told the raging pack
That “feeling bad,” and other lame excuses
Don’t deserve a nice pat on the back
When kids are strangled with elastic nooses.
Joseph S. Salemi has published five books of poetry, and his poems, translations and scholarly articles have appeared in over one hundred publications world-wide. He is the editor of the literary magazine TRINACRIA and writes for Expansive Poetry On-line. He teaches in the Department of Humanities at New York University and in the Department of Classical Languages at Hunter College.
Very good, Sir!
“governed by the monthly moon” is one of many strong lines.
This poem HAD to be written; thank you for doing so!
Thank you, Mt. Erlandson. I was appalled at the sheer tsunami of venom that has been unleashed on social media and elsewhere against this unnamed juror. And I wanted to pre-empt the greater (and much closer) personal danger he and his family will face when his name is revealed. I am deeply grateful to Evan Mantyk for posting the poem as quickly as he did.
Already a cabal of sentimental left-liberals and angry feminists are sharpening their knives to go after this juror as soon as they find out who he is. And Clancy’s defense team is ginning up the effort.
It’s a strong line but it looks as if it’s not been applicable to some of those women for many a moon…
Wow, What an excellent commentary in rhyme and rhythm. Pure evil may be disguised as crazy but it is still just pure evil.
Thank you, Mr. Lackman. One of the major problems in current social discourse is that pure evil is often “contextualized” and “relativized” by certain pressure groups to suit whatever political agenda they are pushing. That’s what’s happening now with this modern Medea.
You are right. It is not that they cannot recognize evil, it just does not fit their agenda. Sometimes I wonder how America changed so much so quickly. Anyway, great poem.
I, too, am grateful that you’ve written this. Many prayers will ascend for this courageous man. Poetically, in line 8 you skillfully began with a trochee, giving appropriate emphasis to “Swollen to bursting, like a gas balloon.” “They confused cold murder with mad passion” is another line that struck me as excellent (as well as being perfectly true).
It’s also impressive that you were able to compose this so quickly.
Thank you, Ms. Erlandson. It always happens when I get angry. Some guys go to the gym to hit a punching bag — I go to the keyboard to type.
I am no god, I don’t know black from white,
I only know we each have our beliefs.
I am entitled to my own “what if?”
As well as you’re entitled to “I’m right,”
But I won’t venture to accuse the moon
Of jurors’ inclination to aquit,
Because a female’s hormones guide her wit
To veil a crime, and never to impugn.
You may be right, Ms. Hall. One never really knows anyone’s deepest motives and inclinations.
Yes. Those who resent women’s success in modern business just love blaming Lindsey Clancy’s femaleness instead of the drugs she was using. Oh, the hatespews! Women shouldn’t have a right to vote! More women should stay home and have too many babies–although that happened to be what went wrong for LC.
BUT…If the confession we all saw LC making was suggested to her while she really was insane. If Patrick Clancy turned out to be the one who strangled the children and shoved LC out the window. Does that mean men shouldn’t have a right to vote, to testify in court, or to be outside without supervision?
This case certainly is being used to turn people against one another…and distract attention from the dangers of the drugs that are associated with homicide-suicide, nine out of ten times committed by male patients even though women are more likely to pop the pills.
If LC’s confession was coerced, why did she not disavow it later on, and why did her defense team not make a stink about it? Why did they openly and candidly admit that LC had murdered her three kids?
Patrick Clancy has a rock-solid alibi for the time of the murders. He had been deliberately sent out of the house by his wife to do several errands. Only some crackpot feminists on social media are pushing the notion of Patrick’s guilt.
I wrote this poem to attack the way in which several persons were deliberately undermining the jury system for their own ends. A judge may offer guidance and information to jurors, but he cannot dictate how an individual juror should vote. Other jurors have no right to send private notes to the judge, complaining that one juror “isn’t thinking in an approved manner,” and the defense team has no right to demand that a particular juror be removed simply because he’s not voting their way. Nor can the main defense attorney play to the national gallery of left-liberal lunatics and call for a Presidential pardon for his client, when he knows damned well that the President can only grant pardons in federal criminal cases.
Jurors are free to vote in whatever way they wish. In fact, “jury nullification” means that a jury can entirely disregard evidence or the lack of evidence if they wish, and acquit or convict solely on their personal preferences. To complain about that is to underhandedly call for the abolition of the jury system, and its replacement by bench decisions by liberal judges, and by control of judicial decisions by enraged special interest groups.
That’s what the LC case is being used for — to undermine and discredit the jury system. It has nothing to do with any war between men and women.
Your poem speaks volumes about society’s current trend to justify the unheard-of.
Thank you for your comment, Ms. Deagon. So many things that today seem “acceptable” or “debatable” would have been UNTHINKABLE in 1950.
It’s always brave to stand alone on such a grave issue as this, and your poem presents that skillfully and passionately. I know you’re aware that two men also voted for acquittal, though we might never know whether they, too, were swayed by the moon.
Like many others, I find the trial both heartbreaking and perplexing. There are inconsistencies and unanswered questions as to time-frames, DNA, crushed pills in lemonade, the toxicology report, injuries, concussion/memory lapse/suggestion, hearsay accepted as evidence, one day in a lifetime aural hallucinations, infidelity, changes of clothes and shoes, AI video, etc. I think that all of those required, but didn’t receive, thorough investigation from the outset. So the questions remain, leaving us to conclude what we will. But what if she was framed? It wouldn’t have been too difficult given her condition and the circumstances.
In any case:
Corrupted legal units cause a justice system fail,
But rest assured the highest court and judgment will prevail.
The facts sometimes get buried under perjury and doubt,
But no one hides forever, and one day the truth will out.
Thank you, Jan. God knows there is a ton of detailed evidence, speculation, and loose ends in this case, though the major issue is not in question — the woman deliberately murdered three totally innocent children.
What her defenders have tried to do is gather up every single filament of uncertainty to create what we might call “a scenario of doubt, sympathy, and contextualization” to cover up the major issue. I’m reminded of what happened in the recent past, when the president of Harvard and some other academics attempted to excuse violently antisemitic outbursts by rioting students. When she and others were in a congressional hearing, and asked what those vicious anti-Jew screams meant, all they could reply was “It has to be seen in context.”
I’ll never forget the devastating visual meme that was immediately created and posted at some websites. It showed a smiling Adolf Hitler at his desk, relaxing in a chair as he perused a large volume with a cover that had this title: “MEIN CONTEXT!”
Horrendous acts of violence against children should never be excused. Thank you for this poem Joseph, for acknowledging the courage of this juror.
Thanks, Joseph. I remember the Harvard professor’s absurd comment. There is no context in which her abhorrent rhetoric or the horrific behavior she defended would be defensible.
I don’t give any credence to the leftist insanity or conclusions. And if the children’s mother did murder her children, and I was on that jury and convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that she was the one who did it, and wasn’t framed by her husband and/or his mistress, then I would vote with that lone juror, no matter what the other jurors said or how they voted. But that’s the most important question that’s in doubt, imho. In her mental incapacity from getting dropped on her head, possibly poisoned with crushed psychiatric drugs, and the other horrific trauma, she was vulnerable to suggestion, which could account for her inability to remember and for taking Patrick’s word and “confessing” what he had told her, even though she couldn’t remember.
Norma and Jan, thank you both for your comments.
Thank you for your trenchant poem about courage in the face of high pressure to succumb to the dumbed. I have always praised the power of one as you have done so exquisitely.
Dear Joseph,
Thank you for publicly standing against evil and for your support of the lone juror. Your poem hits hard, as it must.
Roy and Mary, thank you both for your comments.
Excellent Joe: “the monthly moon”, and her goddess, have certainly usurped all reason and the light of Apollo. After a hundred years or so of Freud, we’re seeing where excusing evil and calling it something else leads – one person alone stands against it. I am reminded of Book 5 of Paradise Lost and the wonderful description of the Seraph, Abdiel – ‘faithful found’ – and your writing is very powerful.
James, many thanks. Your comment made me look up the passage in Book 5, and these words about Abdiel struck me:
Among the faithless, faithful only hee;
Among innumerable false, unmov’d,
Unshaken, unseduc’d, unterrifi’d…
I wish I had used them as an epigraph to this piece.
Great read! I, too, was confounded by the jurors and especially the attorney who lashed into the lone juror. Shouldn’t he be disbarred for his comment that, to my mind, was trained against our legal system?
Lindsay Clancy’s lawyer (Kevin Reddington) should be disbarred, but he won’t be. He is now being lionized as a great hero by the left-liberal media, and he is too powerful and prestigious to be touched. But in fact the man’s actions were utterly absurd and irregular, not the least of which was being in contact with members of the jury who wanted the holdout juror to be replaced, and then publicly asking a sitting judge to do that during deliberations. Then there was the overdramatic appeal to the Massachusetts Supreme Court, asking it to intervene in the case, and then the wildly stupid call for Trump to “pardon” his client, even though Reddington knew quite well that a presidential pardon is not possible in a state criminal case.
Thank you, Mr. Salemi! Well said and well rhymed!
This is not a criticism of your poem. But, like your poem, I feel it needs to be said.
After decades of legal abortions, how could Clancy’s actions not have happened. And doesn’t the liberal and feminist backlash against this juror seem like a reaction against the Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Clinic?
Appalled is not strong enough a word for my feelings right now.
Thank you again, Mr Salemi.
Abortion is legal (in varying degrees) in all states, but the murder of living and breathing children is not. It’s not a good idea to confuse the abortion question with the Lindsay Clancy case. Abortion — whether we like it or not — is here to stay, especially after the Supreme Court ruled that the decision on the matter should be sent back to the individual states, and since abortifacient pills are now widely available to anyone who wants them. I’m a Roman Catholic opposed to abortion, but it’s time we realized the abortion battle is over. We have other political battles to fight.
I’m not really qualified to comment on this controversial case, but do have a couple of observations on other controversial cases, one fictional, one not.
In ‘Twelve Angry Men’, both times I’ve watched the movie, I’ve ended up wondering why Henry Ford’s character held out. The evidence seemed cut and dry, so maybe there was an underlying message I was supposed to get from the film makers.
OJ Simpson. This case played out for me in the pages of the Zimbabwe Herald (I had no television), where I had no idea Nicole Brown was white. Brown is a fairly common African-American name, and no photograph of Nicole Brown was published. To me, and all my Zimbabwean friends and colleagues, black and white, it was clear OJ Simpson was guilty.
Sorry this tragic case has caused so much heartache throughout the nation, Being the lone hold out doesn’t mean you’re right and doesn’t mean you are wrong. Your reasoning for holding out should be respected – which sort of contradicts my first paragraph.
Sorry – ‘second paragraph’!
Thanks for your comments, Paul. O.J. Simpson got off scot-free in a cut-and-dried (and very obvious) murder case because he was wealthy, and could hire a battery of expensive and top-notch attorneys. Yes, it was quite clear to anyone who examined the case that O.J. Simpson had violently killed two people. Like many criminals, he got away with it because of technicalities and procedural niceties that a well-paid team of tough attorneys can discover and exploit.
“Twelve Angry Men” was a set piece — a drama designed to set up Henry Fonda as a virtue-encrusted hero of Truth and Justice. If the movie made any point at all, it was that physical evidence and witness testimony might not be as trustworthy as they seem on the surface. The movie touched the American soft spot for defendants — and led directly to two major TV shows of the 1960s: “Perry Mason” and “The Defenders.” Both shows were about the brave defense lawyer fighting against the cruel prosecutor.
Just as I was out of the loop on the OJ Simpson case, I was also out of the loop on the Clancy case and thought the hold out was to acquit her. I’ve just discovered otherwise.
I get a feeling that as human beings we want to think the best of people, can’t countenance a human being committing certain crimes, and will consciously or unconsciously look for mitigating circumstances. Then, you get the lawyers muddying the waters to put in that seed of doubt.
I’d hate to be on a jury in a case like that.
Of course, the bottom line is three little children died. Where’s their justice?
There won’t be any. The media-energized pack of overentitled, liberal, white suburban females will scream endlessly until the potential jury pool for a retrial is hopelessly compromised.
As a longtime resident of Massachusetts, I’ve given up trying to make any sense of what goes on in any governmental arena. Only a corrupt populace could keep voting for corrupt officials who inevitably appoint other incorrigibles to the bench and everywhere else. Your spleen, Joseph, sheds more light than a hundred suppurating so-called hearts.
Many thanks, Kip. I’ll try to stay splenetic!
Ah, how perfect! It turns out that the one lone juror is a brave black guy, being bullied by a pack of overentitled white suburban women, some of them nurses with the peculiar “I-know-best” arrogance of that profession.
Just an update on the Lindsay Clancy case. The embittered (and apparently legally illiterate) lawyer who defended Clancy has now made the spectacularly asinine grandstand play of demanding a public “investigation” of the lone holdout juror, to see if he can be discredited and smeared as a way to somehow reopen the case, or rehash everything, or get the charges against his client dismissed.
This lawyer (Kevin Reddington) has received public pushback only from private citizens who rightly object to these extra-judicial maneuvers. Left-liberals, and most of the legal profession, have kept silent about his actions. There has been no vocal anger from them about the harassment of a juror who did his job according to his conscience — or about the threats against the juror and his family, the doxxing and smearing of his private life, and the need for him to be supported financially by on-line donors to pay his bills for moving to an undisclosed location, and for private security guards.
What is happening to this lone juror is what happens in a Communist state, or a Nazi one, or a country run by Sharia law, where “justice” is dictated by political or religious considerations. And all because an angry and embittered buffoon like Reddington can’t endure the fact that he lost a case he thought would be the final triumph of his career. No one has seemed to notice that Reddington is the epitome of the diehard ideologized fanatic.
Joe, I’m very glad you wrote your “One Lone Juror” poem. It is powerfully written, astutely observant, and deeply painful to consider. I actually attempted to put pen to paper to write about this trial and the facts underlying it and could not bring myself to do so. There are some things situations that are too difficult to write about – especially the murder of three innocent children by their own mother – the very person charged with their welfare. There can be no greater betrayal.
The fact that the Left has focused on excusing this demonic creature’s excuses rather than on the great evil she perpetrated is emblematic of a society which has utterly degenerated into a morass of blood-soaked depravity. That this one juror – a black man who I’m sure knows something or two about prejudices and boundaries — was heroically able to hold out against 11 other people pressuring him to acquit this woman… Well, this is cause for some hope that all is not lost. But the lawyer’s doubling down on the insanity just goes to show how truly depraved our society has become. Our ability to protect our children is at its nadir and the Left has demonstrated how completely bankrupt it has become of even common decency.
And to demonize the juror rather than the murderer??? What kind of world are we living in?
Thank you, Brian. I was hesitant to write about this incident because I am not a lawyer, and felt that the legal technicalities might be too complex for me. But the behavior of that buffoon Reddington was just too much! He said and did so many things that seemed to be beyond the pale of legal propriety, and seemed so utterly contemptuous of the inviolability of a juror’s right to cast whatever vote he wanted to cast, that my anger exploded.
I can only hope that ordinary persons now recognize that the ENTIRE SYSTEM that we live under, and its basis in constitutional protections, is now under fierce attack, not just by leftist radicals but also by a large chunk of academia and the legal profession and the Legacy Media that are aiding and defending the attack.
To anyone reading this: If you vote Democrat in the coming election, you are no better than those stupid Germans who voted for the Nazi party in 1933.
Thank you, Mr Salemi… true and deeply touching.
Many thanks, Pat.