A juror in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial, which ended in a mistrial after an 11-1 deadlock, publicly cheered Karen Read's acquittal in a "Free Karen Read" Facebook group, raising fresh questions about jury screening in one of Massachusetts' most closely watched criminal cases.
Kellie Farina, identified as a senior center chef in Plymouth County, posted in the pro-Read Facebook group on June 18, 2025, the day Read was acquitted in the death of Boston police Officer John O'Keefe. "Over and out Page. Massachusetts Jury did their rightful duty today. Karen's FREE," Farina wrote, Fox News Digital reported. Five days earlier, she had posted a separate comment about the Read proceedings, calling disgraced Massachusetts State Police investigator Michael Proctor a profanity and mocking the prosecution's closing arguments: "The only mention of that POS Michael Proctor by Hank Brennan is he referred to him as bogeyman proctor during his closing arguments. What a freaking joke!"
Farina later sat on the jury that heard Lindsay Clancy's triple murder case at Plymouth Superior Court in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Clancy, 36, faced three counts of first-degree murder for the January 2023 strangulation deaths of her children, Cora, Dawson, and Callan, all under age six, at the family's home in Duxbury, Massachusetts. The defense argued Clancy was experiencing psychosis at the time.
Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial after the jury deadlocked, reportedly splitting 11-1. The panel had deliberated for seven days, more than 36 hours total, without reaching a unanimous verdict on whether Clancy was legally insane when she killed her children, Breitbart reported.
After the mistrial, Farina gave an interview to NBC10 Boston in which she praised defense attorney Kevin Reddington's trial strategy and expressed sympathy for Clancy. She described the prosecution as "very, very harsh."
Farina told the outlet that Reddington "brought all these people in, people that loved her, her family, her in-laws." She added that Patrick Clancy, Lindsay's husband and the father of the three murdered children, "was very compassionate" on the stand. She also credited Reddington for not dragging the trial out:
"So we appreciated the fact that [Reddington] didn't just delay [the trial] and drag it on with a bunch of more medical BS and get more to the point really of who Lindsay is and what her life was like."
Farina described the 911 call made by Patrick Clancy as "the most horrific thing," saying, "It's something that I will never not hear if I think about it." Fox News Digital reached out to Farina for comment on her Karen Read posts but did not report receiving a response.
The combination is hard to ignore: a juror who openly celebrated an acquittal in one high-profile Massachusetts case, mocked the prosecution's investigator, and then sat in judgment on another high-profile case, where she went on to praise the defense and criticize the prosecution. The question is not whether Farina had a right to her opinions. The question is whether the jury selection process in Plymouth County caught any of it.
The mistrial itself was marked by dysfunction inside the jury room. The foreperson reported to Judge Sullivan that one juror "has made statements acknowledging doubt, but refuses to apply it to the verdict as the law states," AP News reported. That holdout, a lone male juror, blocked what would have been a unanimous acquittal by reason of insanity.
Juror Nick Dargie, identified as Juror #10, gave a separate account to the New York Post that painted an even more troubling picture. Dargie said the holdout physically reenacted the children's strangulation during deliberations, wrapping one of the actual exercise bands used in the killings around a water bottle.
Dargie told the New York Post:
"I was so shocked. We're not here to play detective, it's not a game of Clue. This is serious."
He added: "I asked him why are you doing that? That's a band that was used to strangle a child. That's disgusting." Dargie also said the holdout was frequently scrolling his phone during deliberations and could not cite a single piece of evidence or witness testimony to support his position. A second juror, identified as Juror #5, partially defended the holdout, saying other jurors also struggled to see opposing viewpoints and that the prosecution lacked a "smoking gun."
High-profile trials have a way of attracting courtroom spectacle and misconduct, but what happened inside this jury room goes beyond theatrics. One juror arrived with a public record of cheering acquittals and bashing prosecutors. Another allegedly refused to follow the judge's instructions on reasonable doubt. The system that is supposed to filter out both problems, voir dire, the jury selection process, apparently caught neither.
Defense attorney Kevin Reddington did not take the mistrial quietly. He filed an emergency appeal to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court accusing the holdout of being biased against people with debilitating mental illness, the Washington Examiner reported. Clancy's attorneys argued the holdout should have been questioned more thoroughly or dismissed before a mistrial was declared.
Reddington did not hold back in public remarks. "They know that they were robbed by one man for whatever his agenda was, who stole seven weeks of the life of these other jurors," he said, referring to the rest of the panel.
By the following Tuesday, Reddington appeared on "Good Morning America" and struck a different tone, signaling he was open to negotiating a plea with Plymouth County District Attorney Tim Cruz. "I'm willing to listen to Tim. I've known Tim for 30 years. He's a very hard-charging prosecutor," Reddington said.
He added a pointed appeal:
"I hope, however, after sitting through this trial and seeing the evidence that was presented from the government as well as from the defense, that he would revisit that issue and hopefully would be able to work something out that would be acceptable to both sides."
Cruz, for his part, has not indicated publicly what he plans to do with the case. Judge Sullivan set a status hearing for September 29. Whether the DA retries the case, accepts a plea, or takes some other path remains an open question, one that now carries the added weight of a jury process that failed on multiple fronts.
Cases like this one echo a broader pattern in the justice system, where high-profile murder trials are increasingly shadowed by questions about juror conduct and the integrity of deliberations. When the process breaks down, the victims' families pay the price twice, once in the crime, and again in the courthouse.
Cora, Dawson, and Callan Clancy were all under six years old when they were strangled in January 2023. Their father made a 911 call so harrowing that a juror said she would never stop hearing it. Seven weeks of trial, seven days of deliberation, and 36 hours of jury-room argument produced nothing, no verdict, no resolution, no accountability.
Instead, the public learned that one juror had spent months before the trial cheering acquittals and mocking prosecutors on Facebook, and another allegedly reenacted a child's strangulation with the murder weapon during deliberations. The foreperson reported that the holdout acknowledged doubt but refused to apply the law. And the screening process that exists to prevent exactly these problems let all of it through.
A jury is supposed to be twelve citizens applying the law to the facts. When even one seat is filled by someone who arrived with an agenda, or someone who treats evidence like a prop in a game, the whole system fails. Three dead children deserved better than this.
