The mistrial did not end the fight over the man who caused it. It moved the fight onto paper. Kevin Reddington asked Judge William Sullivan to do something courts almost never do after a hung jury in a case this raw: open a limited inquiry into the holdout, the juror the motion still sometimes calls Juror Doe, before the path toward a second trial hardens. The ask is specific, and the specificity is the point. He wants call, text, and data records from the phone for the hours of deliberation, roughly 8:00 or 8:30 in the morning until 4:30 in the afternoon, on every day the panel was locked in from late August through September 4. He wants the device itself placed with a neutral examiner, looked at in a narrow way, and returned on a short clock. He wants the confidential questionnaires preserved, not only the holdout’s but those of the twelve who deliberated and the six alternates. He wants hallway video outside the room, cellphone sign-in sheets, jury notes, and the written answers. He wants the statewide domestic-violence registry checked, probation material pulled, and prosecutors required to say whether they have had any matter since January 2021 in which this juror was a defendant, a complainant, or a subject.

The three questions he wants asked on the record are just as тιԍнт. Did the questionnaire and the sidebar answers during selection tell the truth. Did the sworn ᴀssurance on September 3, the promise to follow the legal instructions, hold. Was there a phone, or any outside information, inside a deliberation that was supposed to be sealed. Reddington has said the inquiry would not touch the substance of the deliberations themselves. That sentence is doing a lot of work. Mᴀssachusetts protects the jury room. A judge can look at whether a juror was qualified, whether a form was false, whether a device brought the outside world in. A judge is not supposed to reopen the argument about who was more persuasive. The defense’s theory is that those outer facts may already be enough to taint what happened. A fellow juror has said the holdout was on his phone during the talks. Old files, widely reported since the mistrial, describe a 2021 domestic-violence prosecution that was dismissed, a later abuse-prevention order tied to a nephew, and eviction pressure while the trial was still going. Forms in this state ask about arrests, charges, lawsuits, and household criminal history. A willful lie can matter. An omission that would have changed whether someone sat at all can matter more. Desronvil’s side has answered the phone claim in kind, alleging that other jurors used phones during deliberations. That counter-allegation has not been tested either.

Sullivan has already done one thing that makes the file harder to read from the outside. He extended an impoundment order over the jury list and the questionnaires, citing the significant and divisive attention the case has drawn, and he did it indefinitely, until the court says otherwise. In paperwork dated September 22 he wrote that there was a real and present risk of personal harm to the jurors and to the integrity of their service. At least one juror had asked for the extension. The materials are not a public record under the order. Lawyers may still be able to reach them. The impoundment does not, by itself, kill the defense motion, and it does not stop jurors from speaking if they choose to. Nearly half of the twelve who deliberated have already given interviews. Sullivan acknowledged that right, and noted that the majority of deliberating jurors and alternates have kept their anonymity anyway. The seal means the public will not get to flip through the forms that the motion treats as the heart of the problem.

Paltzik’s answer has not been a quiet procedural brief. He has called the demand a Looney Tunes attack on a citizen who did his duty, a disgusting ᴀssault on the right to a fair trial, and a precedent that would let any defense lawyer punish the juror who refused to go along. If reprisal becomes normal, he has said, the Sixth Amendment is the thing that leaves. By the weekend before the September 29 hearing, the fight had a practical snag. Local counsel for the holdout said he did not yet have access to the impounded materials needed to respond. Reddington and the Plymouth County District Attorney’s office agreed to continue the inquiry motion as a professional courtesy. Reddington then accused Paltzik of turning that courtesy into a victory that did not exist, and said the motion remained fully alive. On September 29 Clancy appeared in Plymouth for the first time since the mistrial. Sullivan did not rule from the bench on a required finding of not guilty. He put that motion under advisement. He continued the double-jeopardy motion, the holdout inquiry, and a prosecution request for a gag order to November 2. Reddington told the court he is not available for a retrial until June 2027. Sullivan said he did not want the case kicked down the road.

What November 2 can actually produce is narrower than the headlines suggest. Sullivan can preserve records. He can order a limited look at metadata rather than a rummage through a private life. He can decide that the allegations, even if unpleasant, do not justify putting a juror in a chair. He can also be asked, in the separate motion, to end the prosecution on double-jeopardy grounds and not send Clancy back to a second jury at all. A yes on the phone does not convict the holdout of anything. A no does not prove the room was clean. It decides only whether this ᴅᴇᴀᴅlock will be examined as a possible defect, or left as the ordinary failure of twelve people to agree. In a case where one vote already rewrote the outcome, that is not a small door to leave shut or to open.