Judge William Sullivan sealed the Lindsay Clancy juror questionnaires on Tuesday. The order runs ten days, and it came after a week of public speculation about whether one juror answered his honestly. “Based upon threats and concerns over juror safety,” Sullivan wrote, “the Court concludes that immediate and irreparable injury and danger to jurors and to the administration of justice, is real and present.”
There is a wrinkle in that order worth pausing on. Massachusetts law already made those questionnaires confidential, and already said they are not public records. Sealing something that is not public raises the obvious question of what the seal is for, and the answer says more about the state of this case than the order itself does.
This piece explains what the questionnaire actually asks, what a juror swears to when signing it, what the penalty is for getting it wrong, why the documents still exist, and what a ten-day seal adds to a statute that already locked them.
What the questionnaire asks
Every person summoned for jury service in Massachusetts fills out a confidential juror questionnaire from the Office of Jury Commissioner. Its contents are set by statute, G.L. c. 234A, § 22, which requires it to elicit “such information as is ordinarily raised in voir dire examinations of jurors.”
The statute then lists what that means: name, sex, age, residence, marital status, number and ages of children, education level, occupation, employment address, spouse’s occupation and employment address, previous service as a juror, relationship to a police or law enforcement officer, and one more item that is the center of the current argument, “present or past involvement as a party to civil or criminal litigation.”
That phrase is broad on its face. A defendant in a criminal case is a party to criminal litigation. A defendant in a summary process eviction is a party to civil litigation. A person against whom a civil restraining order has issued is a party to civil litigation. Public reporting has described the holdout juror as having had all three. Whether he disclosed any of them is not publicly known, and the seal is the reason it is likely to stay that way.
What signing it means
The same statute requires the form to carry a declaration, directly above the signature line, in which the juror states that the information is true to the best of his knowledge and acknowledges “that a wilful misrepresentation of a material fact therein is a crime, which, upon conviction, may be punished by a fine of not more than two thousand dollars.”
Two things follow, and both have been muddled in the coverage.
Lying on the questionnaire is a crime. Commentators saying so are right. But the penalty the Legislature attached is a fine capped at $2,000, with no term of imprisonment. It is a criminal offense at the low end of the scale, and it requires proof that the misrepresentation was willful and that the fact was material, neither of which follows from an omission alone. A juror who did not understand a question, or who did not think a housing case counted, has not willfully misrepresented anything.
Answers given aloud during voir dire are a different matter. Those are given under oath in a judicial proceeding, which brings them within the perjury statute, G.L. c. 268, § 1, carrying up to twenty years in state prison. The questionnaire and the oral examination are not the same exposure, and which one a juror is said to have gotten wrong matters enormously.
They were already confidential
G.L. c. 234A, § 23 is unambiguous. Except for disclosures made during voir dire, or unless the court orders otherwise, the information jurors write on the questionnaires “shall be held in confidence by the court, the clerk or assistant clerk, the parties, trial counsel, and their authorized agents.” The statute then states flatly that completed questionnaires “shall not constitute a public record.”
So no member of the public could have obtained these by asking. The seal does not change that.
What it changes is the escape hatch. Both of those provisions are qualified by the phrase “unless the court orders otherwise,” which means a judge retains discretion to release questionnaires or permit their use. Sullivan’s order removes that discretion from the table for ten days and puts on the record that he has considered and rejected disclosure. It also reaches anyone who might have sought access through a motion rather than a records request, which after ten days of public argument about one juror’s answers was a foreseeable filing.
It is, in short, a statement rather than a new restriction. That is not a criticism. Judges write orders that restate existing law when the existing law is being tested.
Why the documents still exist
NBC10 Boston reported that it could not confirm how the juror filled out his questionnaire, and noted it was unclear whether the document still exists or was destroyed after the mistrial. The statute answers that.
Section 23 requires the clerk to “retain in a secure place all original completed questionnaires for each impanelled jury and alternate jurors until final disposition of the case.” A mistrial is not a final disposition. The Commonwealth has not dismissed the case, a retrial has not happened, and motions are pending for a September 29 hearing. The originals for the seated jurors and alternates must still be in the clerk’s custody in Plymouth.
What was destroyed is different. The statute requires that all copies other than the trial judge’s copy and the clerk’s original be destroyed as soon as practicable after voir dire, and that counsel return their copies to the clerk. So the defense and the prosecution no longer hold them. The judge and the clerk do.
What Sullivan has now sealed, in total
Three overlapping orders, which is unusual and worth keeping straight.
The names of the deliberating and alternate jurors, impounded indefinitely on September 14 after an initial fourteen-day order. The identities of everyone who appeared at the courthouse for jury selection in July, a much larger group of people who never served. And now the questionnaires themselves for ten days.
The juror list is the one that was presumptively public. Under G.L. c. 234A, § 67, the list of jurors expected to appear, containing name, address and date of birth, “shall be available upon request for inspection by parties, counsel, their agents, and members of the public” unless the court orders otherwise. The Supreme Judicial Court held in Commonwealth v. Fujita, 470 Mass. 484 (2015), that juror identities are presumptively public and may be withheld only on a judicial finding of good cause, which may include a risk of harm to jurors or to the integrity of their service. Sullivan made that finding. We covered the impoundment order in our report on the indefinite seal.
What happens if a juror did fail to disclose
This is the question underneath the speculation, and the answer is not the one most people assume.
A failure to disclose during jury selection does not automatically undo anything. The governing framework asks whether the juror answered a material question falsely and whether a truthful answer would have supported a challenge for cause. A party raising it must generally show both, and a judge deciding it has wide discretion. The remedy, where one is granted, is a new trial. Here there is already going to be a new trial if the case proceeds, because the first one ended without a verdict.
That is what makes this unusual. In the ordinary case, a party discovers a juror’s nondisclosure after losing and asks for the verdict to be set aside. There is no verdict here to set aside. The nondisclosure question, if it is ever litigated, would go to whether the defense can use it in support of its pending motions, and to whether the Commonwealth or the court has any interest in pursuing a $2,000 offense against a private citizen who has already been identified, threatened, and driven from his home.
Nothing in the public record indicates that any prosecutor is considering a charge, and no party has filed anything asking the court to examine the questionnaires.
What to watch
Whether the ten-day seal is extended when it lapses near September 25, four days before the scheduled status conference. Whether any news organization moves to unseal, which would be decided under the impoundment rules rather than the public records law, because these are court records. And whether the questionnaire issue surfaces at all on September 29, where the pending business is the defense motion for a required finding of not guilty and a forthcoming double jeopardy motion from newly retained counsel, which we covered in our report on Martin Weinberg’s appearance.
Common questions
What does a Massachusetts juror questionnaire ask?
By statute, G.L. c. 234A, § 22, it asks name, sex, age, residence, marital status, children, education, occupation and employment address, spouse’s occupation, prior jury service, relationship to law enforcement, and present or past involvement as a party to civil or criminal litigation.
Is it a crime to lie on a juror questionnaire?
Yes. A willful misrepresentation of a material fact is a crime punishable by a fine of up to $2,000. There is no term of imprisonment attached. False answers given under oath during voir dire could instead implicate the perjury statute, which is far more serious.
Are juror questionnaires public records?
No. G.L. c. 234A, § 23 provides that completed questionnaires do not constitute a public record and must be held in confidence by the court, clerk, parties and counsel.
Do the Clancy questionnaires still exist?
The originals for the seated jurors and alternates must, because the statute requires the clerk to retain them until final disposition of the case, and a mistrial is not a final disposition. Counsel’s copies were required to be returned and destroyed after voir dire.
What happens if a juror failed to disclose something?
It does not automatically void anything. A party would have to show a false answer to a material question and that a truthful answer would have supported a challenge for cause. The usual remedy is a new trial, which this case is already facing.
The sealing order and Sullivan’s quoted language as reported by the Boston Globe (Travis Andersen), September 16, 2026. NBC10 Boston’s report on the questionnaire, September 11, 2026. G.L. c. 234A, §§ 22, 23 and 67, and c. 268, § 1, read at malegislature.gov and quoted from the statutory text. Commonwealth v. Fujita, 470 Mass. 484 (2015), verified against CourtListener. No juror has been charged with any offense, and no party has moved to examine the questionnaires. General information about Massachusetts law, not legal advice.