The lawyer for the holdout juror in the Lindsay Clancy trial answered Kevin Reddington’s motion on Tuesday. He did not answer it in Plymouth Superior Court, because he cannot. He answered it in a written statement to WCVB, and the constitutional argument he made in it belongs to someone else.
Edward Andrew Paltzik, who represents juror Michael P. Desronvil and who has represented President Trump in litigation against CBS, called the motion “Looney Tunes,” referred to Reddington as “Kevin ‘Shooter McGavin’ Reddington,” and wrote that the request “is actually a full-frontal attack on the U.S. Constitution.” His central line: “if the new normal is that jurors are going to face brutal reprisals for disagreeing with a defense attorney, you can kiss the Sixth Amendment goodbye.” He closed by predicting it would “backfire spectacularly on sore loser Reddington.”
The rhetoric is doing work that the law does differently. It is worth separating the two.
The Sixth Amendment is the defendant’s
The text is not ambiguous about whose right it is. “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury.” The guarantee runs to the accused. A juror has no Sixth Amendment right to serve, no Sixth Amendment right to deliberate unexamined, and no Sixth Amendment claim to raise.
In this proceeding the only person holding a Sixth Amendment right to an impartial jury is Lindsay Clancy, and it is Clancy’s lawyers who are invoking it. Their argument is that the right was violated during deliberations, that the judge was required to look into it and did not, and that the failure to look is why a retrial should be barred. Whatever the merits, the amendment Paltzik says Reddington is attacking is the amendment Reddington is claiming.
What actually protects a juror
Paltzik’s instinct is not baseless. It just has a different source.
The protection jurors have in Massachusetts is the no-impeachment rule from Commonwealth v. Fidler, 377 Mass. 192 (1979), which bars the use of juror testimony about the internal workings of deliberations to attack a verdict, while permitting inquiry into “extraneous” influences reaching the jury from outside. Federal law runs the same way under Tanner v. United States, 483 U.S. 107 (1987), with a narrow exception carved out in Pena-Rodriguez v. Colorado, 580 U.S. 206 (2017) for clear statements of racial animus.
The reasons those rules exist read like Paltzik’s statement written in judicial prose: finality, the freedom of jurors to speak candidly behind a closed door, and the protection of jurors from post-trial harassment by the losing side. That is a real body of law, and it is the strongest thing on the juror’s side. It is not the Sixth Amendment.
There is a second layer. Juror questionnaires in Massachusetts are confidential by statute, and Judge William Sullivan impounded the juror records in this case indefinitely. We set out what that impoundment does and does not cover in our piece on the questionnaires.
Why the response came as a press release
Desronvil is not a party. He has no pleading to file, no right of appeal, and no seat at counsel table. A person in that position has three practical options, and none of them is an opposition brief.
He can wait, and let the Commonwealth take the position that the motion should be denied. He can move to quash if and when a subpoena actually issues for his phone records or his testimony, which is the ordinary vehicle for a nonparty resisting compulsory process. Or he can ask the judge for leave to be heard on the limited question of his own records, which a court can allow but is not obliged to.
Until one of those happens, a statement to a television station is the only channel he has. That is why the response reads the way it does. It is addressed to the public, not to Judge Sullivan, and it is not constrained by the rules that govern what a lawyer may say in a filing.
What Reddington actually asked for
Two things, filed Monday in Plymouth Superior Court by Reddington and Martin Weinberg.
The first is a motion to dismiss on double jeopardy grounds. It argues that the claims brought to the judge during deliberations, that a juror was not applying the law as instructed, “required a judicial inquiry sufficient to ascertain whether her right to an impartial jury was being violated,” that no such inquiry was made before the mistrial was declared, and that a retrial is therefore barred.
The second is the inquiry itself: preservation of the juror records, access to Desronvil’s questionnaire, his phone records to determine whether he used a cellphone during deliberations, and his testimony under oath. We laid out the standard Reddington has to meet, and the Fidler problem he runs into, in our analysis of the motion.
“I’m hoping that Judge Sullivan allows the termination of the case,” Reddington told reporters Monday. “It’s just a case that needs to be done.” Asked about Desronvil’s earlier public statement, he said he had no reaction, adding, “We take care of that in the courtroom.”
The argument Paltzik makes that does land
One passage in the statement is worth taking seriously on its own terms, and it is the symmetry point.
“Imagine a similar trial sometime in the not too distant future where it is the reverse scenario: 11-1 in favor of guilty, with one holdout favoring not guilty by reason of insanity. I doubt you folks would be alright if the District Attorney then filed a motion to investigate that lone holdout standing in the way of a conviction.”
That is close to the policy rationale the Supreme Judicial Court and the Supreme Court have both given for the no-impeachment rule. A rule that lets the losing side reopen the jury room is a rule that works for prosecutors too, and it works against acquittals more often than against convictions, because the government is the party with subpoena power and an investigative apparatus. Judges know that, which is why the exceptions are narrow and why the burden falls on the party seeking the inquiry.
What happens next
The next hearing is September 29 before Judge Sullivan. On the calendar are the motion for a required finding of not guilty filed earlier in September, the double jeopardy motion filed Monday, and the juror inquiry request. Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz has still not said whether he will retry the case, and Reddington said Monday he has not heard from him.
Desronvil’s position will be represented on September 29 only if the judge allows it or the Commonwealth argues it. His lawyer’s statement is not before the court.
Does a juror have Sixth Amendment rights?
No. The Sixth Amendment guarantees rights to “the accused,” including the right to an impartial jury. Jurors are protected by other law: the no-impeachment rule of Commonwealth v. Fidler, statutory confidentiality of juror records, and the trial judge’s control over post-verdict contact with jurors.
Can the juror’s lawyer file an opposition?
Not as of right. Desronvil is not a party. He can move to quash a subpoena directed at him, or ask the judge for leave to be heard on his own records. Neither has been reported.
What did Paltzik say?
That Reddington’s motion is “a full-frontal attack on the U.S. Constitution,” that jurors facing “brutal reprisals for disagreeing with a defense attorney” would mean “you can kiss the Sixth Amendment goodbye,” and that the motion will “backfire spectacularly.” He also called it “Looney Tunes” and referred to Reddington as a “sore loser.”
What is the no-impeachment rule?
Under Commonwealth v. Fidler, juror testimony about what happened inside deliberations generally cannot be used to attack a verdict. Inquiry is permitted into extraneous matters that reached the jury from outside, such as outside information or contact.
When is the next Clancy hearing?
September 29, 2026, before Judge William Sullivan in Plymouth Superior Court.
Paltzik’s full written statement as published by WCVB, September 22, 2026. Reddington’s motions, his remarks to reporters and the quoted language from the motion to dismiss from NBC10 Boston, September 21 and 22, 2026. Case citations verified: Commonwealth v. Fidler, 377 Mass. 192 (1979); Tanner v. United States, 483 U.S. 107 (1987); Pena-Rodriguez v. Colorado, 580 U.S. 206 (2017). Sixth Amendment text as ratified. Lindsay Clancy has pleaded not guilty and the mistrial leaves every charge unresolved. Michael Desronvil has not been accused of a crime. General information about Massachusetts law, not legal advice.