The funniest thing you’ll see all week is the moment CBS Mornings host Gayle King found out the lone juror in the Lindsay Clancy trial who wouldn’t vote to acquit was a black man.
She nearly needed smelling salts.
In an interview Friday, Paula Devlin, one of the jurors who did vote to acquit Clancy of strangling her three children by reason of insanity, described the demographics of her co-jurors. They ranged in age from their early 20s to “70-ish,” and there was just “one person of color,” Devlin said. The rest were white.
King proceeded to ask, “Was the person of color a woman or a man?” He was a man, Devlin said.
“Is the holdout juror a person of — a black man?” asked King in near disbelief. Devlin said he was. King asked again, to be sure. “A black man is the holdout juror?” Yes, Devlin said, looking every bit as dismayed as King.
“Whoa. I have to sit with that for just a second.”
King was fortunately seated safely in a large cushioned chair, lest she had face planted.
Recent events related to the Clancy case and the ultimate ruling of a mistrial offer some interesting clues why King had to “sit with that for just a second.”
First, this lone black male juror is the one whose peers complained in a note to the judge that he wasn’t following instructions by the court with regard to “reasonable doubt.” In essence, a room full of white people, ready to excuse a white woman for strangling her three young children, had grown frustrated with a black man who wouldn’t conform.
Second, Clancy’s defense aggressively pleaded that the judge remove the one black man — the only “person of color” — from the otherwise all-white jury pool because he wasn’t following along with what the white jurors had decided. What they had decided was to absolve a woman of responsibility for admitting to strangling her own kids.
Third, after the judge declared a mistrial, several of the other white jurors publicly disparaged the holdout. Devlin, the same one interviewed by Gayle King, called him “very arrogant.”
Another juror, Kellie Farina, faulted the single black juror for not “getting over the fact that Lindsay viciously ended the lives of her children.” To be sure, Farina said he “had the hardest time getting over” what Clancy did.
Yet another juror complained with a straight face that the holdout wouldn’t “show us evidence or … witness testimony that helped to prove what he was saying.”
Presumably pointing to the three young victims who Clancy admits to attacking by wrapping rubber exercise bands around their necks wasn’t enough “evidence” for the holdout juror to “prove what he was saying” to the others.
This might account for at least some of the reason Gayle King needed to “sit with that for just a second” when she found out that the holdout was a black man.
For some people, it’s a lot to take in. Namely, the jurors who excuse the deliberate ending of three children’s lives — and the CBS host who needed smelling salts when she learned who wouldn’t go along.
Gayle King finds out the Lindsay Clancy holdout juror, who wouldn't acquit, was a black man and says, "Wow. I'll have to sit with that for a second."
pic.twitter.com/CyZUjnf7YW— Eddie Scarry (@eScarry) September 11, 2026
NEW: ABC News speaks exclusively with another Lindsay Clancy trial juror, the *fifth* to have spoken out since the trial ended. ABC said Nick Dargie, one of the two men who sided with the nine women who voted not guilty, was “devastated” he couldn’t to set Clancy free, and… pic.twitter.com/WhyppJL5HU
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) September 9, 2026
