Ron DeSantis on Friday accused the media of launching a smear campaign against the lone holdout juror in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial, igniting a fresh political firestorm.
The controversy erupted after NBC10 Boston published a report revealing that the holdout juror had a history of alleged domestic violence and an active restraining order against him.
DeSantis pushed back sharply on social media, framing the report as an attack on a juror who refused to let a defendant escape accountability for killing her children.
“A man objected to allowing a woman to kill her three young kids and get away with it, so NBC is trying to smear that juror, whose identity should be protected,” DeSantis wrote.
He called the report “another low for legacy media,” signaling his broader criticism of mainstream news organizations covering the high-profile case.
DeSantis then went a step further, personally offering the unidentified juror protection from any harassment he might face following the NBC10 Boston report.
“If the juror is being harassed, Florida will provide asylum — I’m sure he’d be welcomed and appreciated,” DeSantis wrote in a follow-up social media post.
According to NBC10 Boston, the juror was charged in 2021 for allegedly assaulting his then-wife after his 13-year-old nephew told police he saw the man grab her by the throat and throw her into a wall.
The juror was the sole holdout after the panel split 11-1 on whether to find Clancy not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect, triggering a prolonged deliberation process.
Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial last week after seven days of deliberations failed to produce a unanimous verdict among the twelve jurors.
Lindsay Clancy was charged with killing her three children, Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months, at the family’s Duxbury, Massachusetts home in 2023.
Her defense attorneys argued she was experiencing postpartum psychosis at the time of the killings and was therefore not criminally responsible for her actions.
The case drew enormous national attention, drawing sharp debate over the intersection of mental health, criminal responsibility, and maternal violence in the American legal system.
With a mistrial now declared, prosecutors will face the decision of whether to retry Clancy, keeping the deeply divisive case in the public spotlight for the foreseeable future.
