The holdout juror in the Lindsay Clancy trial has a name now, and it was not a court or a newsroom that supplied it. Aidan Kearney, the blogger who publishes as Turtleboy, posted it to X at 8:27 p.m. Saturday with a photograph, and his site, TB Daily News, ran it under a headline that took up two lines. The name is Michael P. Desronvil. Kearney’s identification rests on a MassCourts docket screenshot that an anonymous sports-meme account posted thirteen hours earlier, matched against details in NBC10 Boston’s Friday report on the juror’s court history. No news organization has confirmed that the man in that docket is the man who sat in seat twelve. The jury list remains impounded until about September 18.
We wrote Friday that we would not print a name that no court record or news organization had confirmed. We are printing it now, attributed to the man who published it, because the identification is itself the story: who did it, how, on what evidence, and what the law says about all three. Nothing below should be read as confirmation. Mr. Desronvil has not spoken publicly, and neither the court, the district attorney nor Clancy’s lawyer has said whether the identification is correct.
How the name got out
The sequence, reconstructed from the posts themselves, runs like this.
Friday, 4 p.m. NBC10 Boston publishes its report that the holdout juror was charged in September 2021 with assaulting his wife in Brockton, a charge later dismissed after she declined to testify, and that a nephew obtained a restraining order against him last year that remained in force through the trial. The station does not name him. It says it learned the history “through court documents and interviews with family members.”
Saturday, 3:46 a.m. An X account called TalkinStros, whose profile describes it as Houston Astros memes, posts a screenshot of a MassCourts docket: Commonwealth v. Desronvil, Michael P., Brockton District Court, docket 2115CR003068, assault and battery on a family or household member, offense date September 25, 2021. The caption: “This is the holdout juror in the #LindsayClancy case.” The account later explained its method: NBC10’s report left enough detail that a search of the public MassCourts database “took about 2 minutes.”
Saturday, 8:27 p.m. Kearney posts the name in text, with a photograph he says is the juror, an image of the nephew’s handwritten affidavit as shown on NBC10, and a reference to a Bridgewater apartment and unpaid rent. The post drew roughly 650,000 views by Sunday. TB Daily News published a full article, adding that the juror is a Haitian immigrant who came to the United States at five, that his family described him as a “narcissist,” and that a landlord holds a default judgment of $12,644.22 for rent unpaid since April.
Sunday. Kearney, answering criticism, wrote that he did not dox anyone because the name “was already reported” by TalkinStros. CBS News published its own account of the 2021 charge and its dismissal Saturday night and did not name the juror, explaining that “the court has not yet made the jury list public.” By Sunday afternoon the name was on a squatted domain and in posts from a dozen accounts, most of them anonymous.
What the identification actually rests on
Two things, and it is worth separating them.
The first is that a Brockton District Court docket exists in the name Michael P. Desronvil for a September 2021 domestic assault charge. That is a public record. Anyone can look it up, and the screenshot appears genuine.
The second is that this man is the Clancy holdout. That is an inference. NBC10 described an unnamed juror’s court history. An anonymous account found a docket matching the description. The match is plausible, and it may well be right. It is also exactly the kind of inference that produces a wrong name, because the description was of a common fact pattern in a busy district court, and because the people asserting the match have not seen the impounded jury list. Kearney has not said he has. If the match is wrong, a private man with a dismissed charge has been named to hundreds of thousands of people as the juror who hung the Clancy jury, and there is no correcting it.
The other jurors have said the holdout was a Black man in his 30s and the only person of color on the jury. Kearney’s photograph is of a Black man. That is the extent of the corroboration available to the public.
The records, accurately stated
Because the name is now attached to them, the records deserve to be described precisely.
The 2021 charge was one count of assault and battery on a family or household member, a misdemeanor. The police account, as reported by NBC10 and CBS, was that a 13-year-old nephew called 911 and said his uncle grabbed his wife by the throat and threw her into a dresser. The defendant pleaded not guilty. The charge was dismissed. Under Massachusetts law a dismissed charge is not a conviction, is not evidence of guilt, and, for most purposes, is a record the person is entitled to have sealed.
The restraining order is a civil order under chapter 209A or chapter 258E, issued on the nephew’s affidavit that his uncle pushed him down and punched him repeatedly and said, in the affidavit’s words, “you’ve had this coming.” An order can issue on a one-sided showing and does not require a finding beyond a reasonable doubt. It was, according to NBC10, active during jury selection and the trial.
The eviction is a civil default judgment for unpaid rent. It says nothing about anything except that rent was not paid.
None of these is a crime of which the man has been convicted. All of them are things the juror questionnaire asks about, and a willful misrepresentation on that form is itself a misdemeanor under chapter 234A. Whether he was asked and how he answered is in a document the public cannot see. CBS’s legal analyst Caroline Polisi put the test correctly: “whether he made purposeful misrepresentations during the jury selection process. If he did, that’s a crime.”
The man who published the name
Kearney’s own record is relevant, because it is the reason Massachusetts judges now seal jury lists.
In December 2023 a Norfolk County grand jury indicted him on sixteen counts arising from his coverage of the Karen Read case: eight of witness intimidation, three of conspiracy to intimidate, and five of picketing a witness. A judge dismissed six counts in May 2025 and roughly ten remain. He was charged with two additional counts of witness intimidation in May 2025 over a confrontation outside a Canton pizza shop during Read’s retrial. His bail was revoked and he spent about two months in jail. A separate case involving a former girlfriend was dropped by the Norfolk district attorney in October 2025. He was indicted in New Jersey on a cyber-harassment charge the same month. A trial on the remaining Massachusetts charges has been tentatively set for December 1, 2026. He is presumed innocent of all of it.
After Read’s first trial ended in a hung jury in 2024, the judge impounded the jury list indefinitely, citing a juror who said she was frightened for her family and referring to Kearney’s public comments about identifying the foreperson. A follower of his later posted the foreperson’s identity anyway. Posts circulating this weekend say he also identified the holdout juror after the 2023 hung jury in the trial of Emanuel Lopes for the Weymouth police killings; we could not confirm that from any published record and do not repeat it as fact.
What the law reaches, and what it does not
Publishing a name is not a crime. Judge Sullivan’s impoundment order binds the clerk, the parties and the court’s records; it does not bind a blogger who finds a public docket, and the First Amendment protects the publication of lawfully obtained public information. That is the line NBC10 and CBS stood behind when they declined to name him: not that they could not, but that the court had asked them not to and they chose to honor it.
What the law reaches is what follows. Chapter 268, section 13B makes it a felony, punishable by up to ten years, to willfully “mislead, intimidate or harass” a person who “is or was” a juror with intent to retaliate for the juror’s service, and it extends to family members. Publishing an address, a workplace, a photograph and an invitation to a “GoFundMe” for the man who “single handedly” hung the jury, which is the language now circulating, is the record a prosecutor would use if anyone acts on it. The juror himself may seek a harassment prevention order under chapter 258E against any person who engages in a pattern of conduct directed at him. And the Norfolk district attorney, who has already charged Kearney sixteen times over conduct toward Read witnesses, has jurisdiction over conduct directed at a Plymouth County juror only if it occurs in Norfolk; the Plymouth district attorney, Timothy Cruz, has it otherwise. Neither office has commented.
For the Clancy case itself, the identification changes nothing that was not already in motion. Reddington’s motions are set for September 29. If either side asks the court to examine the juror’s questionnaire, that inquiry will happen in a courtroom, under Commonwealth v. Amirault, with the juror present and represented. It will be the first time anyone with authority to decide whether the man in the docket is the man on the jury will say so.
Who is the Clancy holdout juror, according to Turtleboy?
Aidan Kearney identified him on September 12 as Michael P. Desronvil, based on a Brockton District Court docket screenshot posted by an anonymous account and matched to NBC10 Boston’s unnamed report. No court or news organization has confirmed the identification.
Did NBC10 name the juror?
No. NBC10 reported his court history without a name. An anonymous X account found a matching docket in the public MassCourts database and posted it the next morning.
What is the 2021 charge?
One misdemeanor count of assault and battery on a family or household member, filed in Brockton District Court in September 2021. The defendant pleaded not guilty and the charge was dismissed.
Is it illegal to publish a juror’s name?
No. Publishing lawfully obtained public information is protected. Harassing, intimidating or retaliating against a current or former juror is a felony under G.L. c. 268, § 13B.
Who is Aidan Kearney?
A Massachusetts blogger who publishes as Turtleboy. He faces roughly ten remaining felony counts of witness intimidation and related charges from the Karen Read case, with trial tentatively set for December 2026, and has previously identified holdout jurors in two other Massachusetts murder trials. He is presumed innocent.
Has the juror responded?
No. He has made no public statement, and CBS reported it had not heard back after reaching out.
Sequence of publication reconstructed from posts on X by @TalkinStros (September 12, 3:46 a.m.), @DoctorTurtleboy (September 12, 8:27 p.m., and September 13) and @NBC10Boston (September 11), and from TB Daily News (September 12). Court history as reported by NBC10 Boston (September 11) and CBS News (September 13). Kearney’s charges from CBS Boston, Boston 25, Court TV and NBC Boston, 2023 through 2025. Statutes read at malegislature.gov. This publication has not confirmed that the man named is the Clancy juror and has not published his address, workplace or photograph. The 2021 charge was dismissed; the restraining order and eviction are civil matters; he is presumed innocent of any offense. Charges against Lindsay Clancy remain unproven and she is presumed innocent. General information about Massachusetts law, not legal advice.