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Law Professor Jonathan Turley had some choice words for attorney Kevin Reddington after the Lindsay Clancy murder trial ended in a mistrial.
"The attack on the holdout juror that was a breathtaking abandonment of restraint and decency."
Frankly, they were deserved.
Reddington represented Clancy in the trial over the murders of her three young children. He did not merely express disappointment with the hung jury. He went after the lone holdout juror in a manner Turley described as "utterly reprehensible."
There is a reason lawyers are expected to exercise restraint when discussing jurors. Those citizens are not political opponents, punching bags, or convenient targets for public humiliation. They are ordinary people who have been entrusted with one of the most serious responsibilities in American society.
Apparently Reddington decided that responsibility went out the window the moment one juror refused to give him the verdict he wanted. "For Reddington and others, the hung jury was less ‘Twelve Angry Men’ and more ‘One Angry Man.’ Yet, what he did in front of the courthouse was utterly reprehensible …" Turley wrote.
Turley went even further, arguing that Reddington knew precisely what could happen when he publicly singled out the juror."…The attack on the holdout juror that was a breathtaking abandonment of restraint and decency. Reddington knows it is very likely that the name of this juror (he has already been identified as one of only the three men on the jury) will eventually be uncovered by Internet…"— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) September 5, 2026.
"But it was his attack on the holdout juror that was a breathtaking abandonment of restraint and decency. Reddington knows it is very likely that the name of this juror (he has already been identified as one of only the three men on the jury) will eventually be uncovered by Internet sleuths," he added.
"He effectively put a target on the back of a juror who committed the unpardonable sin of not being convinced by his arguments." That is the truly ugly part of this episode. Reddington had every right to argue his client's case. He had every right to be disappointed by the verdict, or lack thereof. He had every right to challenge legal rulings through appropriate channels.What he did not need to do was publicly demonize a juror who simply refused to agree with him.
But Reddington apparently wasn't finished.
Just before the judge officially declared a mistrial, Reddington made a Hail Mary attempt to have the lone holdout removed and replaced with an alternate. The effort failed. But not before Reddington used his filing to accuse the juror of having an inherent bias against people with disabilities or those suffering from mental illness.
Then, after the mistrial was declared, Reddington went after the juror again. He claimed that Clancy and the other jurors had been "robbed by one man," Reddington made sure the public knew that the supposed villain was one of only three men on the jury. "They know they were robbed by one man, for whatever his agenda was, who stole seven weeks of the life of these other jurors that were so attentive, so beautiful, so wonderful," he said.
Think about that for a moment. One citizen disagreed with the other jurors. Rather than recognizing that a jury is supposed to deliberate and that disagreement is an essential part of the process, Reddington portrayed that citizen as someone with some mysterious "agenda" who had supposedly stolen seven weeks from everyone else.
That is not an argument for justice. It sounds more like the tantrum of a lawyer who cannot accept that his arguments failed to persuade someone.Reddington then sneered, "I hope that guy can sleep well at night," while boasting that he had "crushed" District Attorney Tim Cruz and accusing Cruz of not caring about the murdered children.
There is something particularly grotesque about turning a murder trial involving three dead children into a courtroom version of a personal score-settling exercise.
Outside the courthouse, women supporting Clancy's murderous acts shouted at Cruz that he "only cared about the [murdered] children" and had no compassion for their mother, who never denied that she was the one who killed them.
Turley correctly invoked the classic 1957 film "12 Angry Men" to make the point that Reddington appears to have forgotten one of the most fundamental principles of jury deliberation: jurors are not required to surrender their consciences simply because everyone else disagrees with them. "The rising hatred toward this juror reflects how an act deemed noble in one context can be denounced as craven in another."
"Viewers love to watch Henry Fonda stand alone against his fellow jurors to raise reasonable doubt in favor of the young defendant," Turley continued. "But in this version, the sole juror believed that his fellow jurors were ignoring the defendant’s culpability."
Exactly. The hero of "12 Angry Men" is celebrated because he refuses to cave to the majority. He doesn't demand that the holdout be removed. He doesn't publicly brand his fellow jurors as villains. He doesn't suggest that someone should be replaced because that person refuses to go along with everyone else. He stands his ground. That is precisely what makes Turley's criticism so important.
Imagine if the logic Reddington appeared to embrace had been applied to Henry Fonda's character. The lone holdout could simply have been tossed aside and replaced by someone more agreeable. The deliberation would end when the majority got tired of hearing dissent.
That might make for a convenient legal system. It would also be a terrifying one. And this is where Reddington's conduct crosses from merely being aggressive advocacy into something far uglier. A lawyer can fight like hell for his client without treating a citizen who disagrees with him as a human punching bag. The holdout juror did not "steal" anything.
He did his job.
He deliberated.
He listened.
And he refused to convict or reach whatever conclusion the other jurors wanted simply because they had the numbers. That is not a failure of the jury system. That is the jury system.
Turley ultimately brought the discussion back to another classic work, "To Kill a Mockingbird," quoting the principle that should have been obvious throughout this entire episode: "‘The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience,'"
There it is.
A conscience does not require permission from a lawyer. It does not require approval from a prosecutor. It does not require agreement from eleven other jurors. And it certainly does not disappear because an attorney is furious that his case did not produce the verdict he wanted.
Reddington may believe he "crushed" the prosecution. He may believe one juror ruined seven weeks of deliberation. He may believe the juror was biased. But none of that gives him license to publicly put a target on that citizen's back.
Jonathan Turley was right to call it out. A lawyer's job is to advocate for his client. It is not to publicly vilify an ordinary citizen for having the audacity to exercise his conscience.
If Reddington cannot tolerate a juror who refuses to fall in line, perhaps the problem is not the juror. Perhaps the problem is the lawyer.
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