Filming Jurors in the Lindsay Clancy Trial and Massachusetts Witness Intimidation Law

Massachusetts law protects jurors from intimidation and harassment, but it does not make every photograph or video of a juror a crime. An arrest during jury deliberations in the Lindsay Clancy trial brings that boundary into focus and presents a useful statutory question: what must the Commonwealth prove when the alleged act is recording rather than a threat or direct contact?

The accused was charged with aggravated intimidation under G.L. c. 268, § 13B after prosecutors alleged that she recorded jurors leaving the Plymouth courthouse during deliberations on September 1, 2026. The reported facts also raise two separate, uncharged questions: whether moving the recording into the phone’s deleted-files folder could constitute evidence tampering under G.L. c. 268, § 13E, and whether denying to State Police that she had recorded jurors could constitute misleading an investigator under § 13B. The reported court order and the possibility of recorded audio present additional issues. Each issue has its own elements.

The accused pleaded not guilty. Defense counsel stated that she was attempting to photograph Lindsay Clancy and did not intend to interact with jurors. The accused was separately reported as saying that she did not realize she had recorded jurors. This article analyzes the allegations as publicly reported. It does not assume that the allegations are true, and no factfinder has decided whether the accused committed any offense.

The central distinctions are straightforward. Taking a video of jurors is not automatically witness intimidation. Deleting a video is not automatically evidence tampering. Making an inaccurate statement to police is not automatically misleading an investigator. The result depends on the elements of each statute, including the nature of the conduct, the required mental state, and its connection to a proceeding or investigation.

The Allegations and the Present Status of the Case

According to the prosecutor’s account at arraignment, court officers saw the accused in a restricted parking area behind the Plymouth courthouse while jurors were leaving after a day of deliberations. The Commonwealth alleges that she had backed her vehicle into a space facing the exit and recorded multiple jurors with her phone.

The prosecutor further alleged that the accused told State Police she was waiting to record Clancy and denied recording the jurors. According to that account, the accused consented to a search of the phone. Troopers reportedly found a video of jurors in the phone’s deleted-files folder.

A not-guilty plea was entered on the accused’s behalf. The judge denied the Commonwealth’s request for cash bail and released her on personal recognizance. Conditions require the accused to stay away from the courthouse, jurors, and witnesses and to refrain from disseminating images from the incident. Those release conditions protect the proceeding while the charge is pending. They are not findings that any element of the charge has been proved.

Published reports also describe a June 2026 order in the Clancy case that prohibited filming or photographing the jury before discharge and prohibited contact, following, communication, harassment, or tampering. The public reporting does not establish whether the accused knew of that order before the alleged recording.

Section 13B Expressly Protects Jurors

The offense is commonly called witness intimidation, but that common label understates the statute’s reach. General Laws c. 268, § 13B expressly protects jurors, along with witnesses, potential witnesses, judges, lawyers, investigators, police officers, court employees, and several other participants in legal proceedings.

The Commonwealth generally must prove three components beyond a reasonable doubt:

1. The defendant willfully engaged, directly or indirectly, in conduct the statute prohibits. The listed conduct includes misleading, intimidating, or harassing a protected person.
2. The person at whom the conduct was directed belonged to a protected statutory category. A sitting juror is expressly protected.
3. The defendant intended to impede, obstruct, delay, prevent, or otherwise interfere with a qualifying proceeding, or acted with reckless disregard that the conduct might do so. The statute also covers specified retaliatory conduct.

The first and third components answer different questions. The Commonwealth must prove that the alleged act was willful, meaning intentional rather than accidental. It must separately prove the required purpose or reckless disregard concerning the proceeding. Commonwealth v. Rezac, 494 Mass. 368 (2024).

Misleading, intimidating, and harassing are alternative forms of prohibited conduct. Proof of one does not by itself prove either of the others.

The statutory definition of harassment is narrower than the term’s ordinary use. The act must be directed at a specific person or group, must seriously alarm or annoy that person or group, and must be conduct that would cause a reasonable person or group to suffer substantial emotional distress. An intimidation theory does not always require proof that the target experienced actual fear or that the effort succeeded. Commonwealth v. Gordon, 44 Mass. App. Ct. 233, 235 to 236 (1998); Commonwealth v. Robinson, 444 Mass. 102, 109 to 110 (2005).

Whether Filming the Jurors Can Constitute Intimidation

Massachusetts already has a published decision involving a camera directed at a protected participant outside a courtroom. In Commonwealth v. Casiano, 70 Mass. App. Ct. 705 (2007), a defendant awaiting trial pointed a cellular telephone camera at an undercover officer who was waiting to testify against him. The defendant pressed buttons as though taking photographs and later stated that he had already emailed the photographs to his home. The Appeals Court held that the evidence permitted the jury to find intimidation.

The court explained that intimidation need not take the form of an express threat. The camera conduct could threaten the undercover officer’s continuing safety, and the time, place, and circumstances permitted an inference that the defendant intended to influence the officer’s impending testimony. The conviction did not depend on proof that a photograph had been taken or disseminated. Casiano, 70 Mass. App. Ct. at 708 to 710. Casiano interpreted an earlier version of § 13B. The Legislature amended the statute in 2018, but the current Massachusetts model jury instruction continues to cite Casiano as an example of camera conduct from which a jury may infer intimidation.

Casiano answers one legal question but not the whole case. It establishes that directing a camera at a protected person can constitute intimidation. It does not establish that every photograph or video of a juror is intimidation.

Several facts in Casiano made the inference stronger. The person holding the camera was the defendant in the underlying prosecution. He knew the person he photographed was an undercover officer about to testify against him. The officer saw the conduct. The defendant then made a statement implying that the images had been sent elsewhere and could be used later.

The reported allegations differ from Casiano in important respects. The accused was a spectator rather than a party in the Clancy prosecution. Defense counsel says the intended subject was Clancy rather than the jurors. No public report alleges that the accused spoke to, threatened, followed, or attempted to communicate with a juror. No dissemination of the video has been alleged. The public reporting does not establish that any juror saw the recording as it occurred.

If the Commonwealth relies on harassment rather than intimidation, it must also prove that the act seriously alarmed or annoyed the jurors and would have caused a reasonable person or group to suffer substantial emotional distress. The public reports do not disclose the jurors’ answers during the judge’s inquiry or otherwise establish those facts.

Those distinctions do not prevent the Commonwealth from presenting a § 13B theory, but they affect whether the evidence proves qualifying conduct and the required mental state. Actual fear and successful interference are not always required, and intent may be inferred from circumstances. The Commonwealth can point to the reported location of the vehicle, its orientation toward the restricted exit, the timing as jurors left during deliberations, the number of jurors appearing in the video, the location of the file in the deleted-files folder, and the reported statement to police. It may argue that those circumstances establish intentional targeting and at least reckless disregard that the conduct might interfere with the trial.

The defense can point to the stated purpose of trying to photograph Clancy, the absence of reported contact or threats, the absence of reported dissemination, the uncertainty about whether the accused recognized the people as jurors, and her reported consent to the phone search. The defense can also argue that deleting an unintended recording of jurors is consistent with an effort to remove footage that should not have been taken, rather than an effort to intimidate anyone.

Recording a juror is neither automatically criminal nor automatically outside § 13B. Casiano forecloses the argument that camera conduct can never constitute intimidation. Its fact-specific reasoning does not support the opposite claim that the presence of jurors in a video proves intimidation by itself. The Commonwealth must prove that the accused willfully intimidated or harassed protected jurors and either intended to interfere with the Clancy proceeding or acted with reckless disregard that the conduct might do so.

Why the Charge Carries the Aggravated Penalty

Section 13B ordinarily authorizes a sentence of up to ten years in state prison or up to two and one-half years in the house of correction. Its second penalty paragraph raises the state-prison maximum to twenty years when the misconduct is directed at the investigation or prosecution of a crime punishable by life imprisonment. It retains an alternative maximum of two and one-half years in the house of correction. The two imprisonment periods are alternatives, not consecutive parts of a twenty-two-and-one-half-year sentence.

The Clancy trial concerns murder charges punishable by life imprisonment. That supplies the prosecution’s basis for the aggravated form of the charge. The Commonwealth must still prove that the alleged misconduct was directed at that qualifying prosecution. The aggravated label does not relieve it of proving any element of § 13B.

Whether Deleting the Video Can Constitute Evidence Tampering

The deleted-file allegation belongs under a different statute. General Laws c. 268, § 13E applies when a person alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair its integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding. The proceeding need not already be pending, and the item need not ultimately be admissible in evidence.

The statute does not make every deletion criminal. It requires proof of a specific purpose: impairing the file’s integrity or availability in an official proceeding.

In Commonwealth v. Martinez, 98 Mass. App. Ct. 545, 550 to 552 (2020), the defendant asked another person to take a second phone, smash it, and throw it into a river after he learned of an accusation and had been arraigned. The phone was not destroyed. The Appeals Court upheld an attempted-tampering conviction because § 13E expressly reaches attempts and the circumstances supported an inference that the purpose was to keep the phone and its images from the prosecution.

No published Massachusetts appellate decision has held that moving a digital file into a phone’s deleted-files folder necessarily completes destruction or concealment under § 13E. Pressing delete can support an attempted-destruction or attempted-concealment theory, and recovery of the file does not defeat an attempt charge. The Commonwealth would still have to prove who deleted the file, when the deletion occurred, and why.

The timing and surrounding circumstances of the deletion bear directly on intent. If the video was deliberately deleted after the accused learned that police or the court wanted it, and for the purpose of preventing its use in a contemplated intimidation or contempt proceeding, those facts could support § 13E. If the file was deleted before any police contact because it captured jurors unintentionally, or because the person believed juror footage should not be retained, the required evidence-tampering purpose would be substantially harder to prove.

The ongoing Clancy trial is an official proceeding, but the video does not appear to concern proof of the charges against Clancy. One possible § 13E theory would connect the video to a contemplated proceeding concerning the alleged juror recording itself. The statute permits that proceeding to be contemplated rather than already filed, but it still requires proof that impairing the video’s use in such a proceeding was the reason for the deletion.

The Supreme Judicial Court’s decision in Commonwealth v. Tejeda, 476 Mass. 817, 820 to 821 (2017), reinforces the separation between the statutes. Destroying evidence in plain view does not automatically mislead an investigator under § 13B because it may create no false impression. Evidence destruction instead presents the elements of § 13E.

As of September 2, 2026, no separate evidence-tampering charge has been publicly reported against the accused. The deleted-files location may nevertheless be offered as circumstantial evidence of intent on the pending § 13B charge. It remains circumstantial evidence, not an automatic admission of intent.

Whether the Reported Denial to Police Can Violate Section 13B

Section 13B also prohibits willfully misleading a police officer or investigator in connection with a criminal investigation. The leading decisions impose an important limit: a statement is not criminal merely because it is inaccurate.

In Commonwealth v. Morse, 468 Mass. 360, 372 to 375 (2014), the Supreme Judicial Court held that a simple exculpatory denial, without affirmative misdirection or other evidence of an intent to interfere, was insufficient. Police stood in the same position after the denial as they would have occupied if the person had remained silent.

In Commonwealth v. Paquette, 475 Mass. 793, 797 to 805 (2016), the court explained that a statement is misleading within § 13B only if it reasonably could cause investigators to pursue a materially different course. Whether a statement can do that depends on its content, the stage of the investigation, and what police already know. The Commonwealth need not prove that police were successfully diverted, but it must prove more than falsity.

Both decisions predate the 2018 amendment of § 13B. That amendment expanded the statute and added reckless disregard as an alternative in the third element, but the Legislature retained the word “misleads.” The current model instruction continues to use the requirement stated in Paquette: the statement must be reasonably likely to lead investigators onto a materially different course. The two decisions therefore continue to define what counts as misleading, while the third-element instruction must follow the current statute and the theory charged.

The reported statement here contains two parts: a denial that the accused recorded jurors and an affirmative explanation that she was waiting to record Clancy. The denial alone resembles the bare exculpatory response addressed in Morse. The alternative explanation gives the Commonwealth a possible argument that the statement was more than a bare denial and was calculated to direct attention away from the juror recording.

The counterargument arises under Paquette. Court officers reportedly observed the conduct, police approached the accused because of that report, and troopers soon examined the phone with her consent. If police already knew why they were investigating and immediately checked the source evidence, the statement may not reasonably have been capable of sending them onto a materially different course.

The exact words, their sequence, what the officers knew before asking the question, and the scope and timing of the phone search will determine the issue. A person has a right to remain silent. That right does not authorize an affirmative lie, but an alleged lie becomes a § 13B offense only if the Commonwealth proves the statutory form of misleading and the required connection to the investigation.

The false-report statute, G.L. c. 269, § 13A, addresses knowingly making a false report of a crime. A denial of one’s own alleged conduct does not become a false report of a crime merely because police dispute it. No separate charge based on the reported statement has been publicly reported.

The Court Order Presents a Separate Contempt Question

A clear court order can impose restrictions beyond the generally applicable criminal statutes. To prove criminal contempt, the Commonwealth must establish beyond a reasonable doubt that a clear and unequivocal order was in effect, that the defendant knew of the order, that the defendant clearly and intentionally disobeyed it, and that the defendant had the ability to comply. Commonwealth v. Delaney, 425 Mass. 587, 596 (1997).

Supreme Judicial Court Rule 1:19 separately regulates photography and recording in courtrooms, hearing rooms, judicial offices, chambers, and the lobby of a judge or magistrate. It also permits a judge to impose additional limits needed to protect a fair proceeding. Trial Court Administrative Order 21-1 generally prohibits members of the public from taking photographs or video anywhere inside a courthouse, subject to stated exceptions. The conduct alleged here occurred in an exterior parking area. Rule 1:19 supplies part of the background, but any alleged violation outside its covered spaces must be analyzed under the exact case-specific order and the applicable law.

That issue cannot be resolved from the public report that an order existed. The evidence would have to establish the order’s exact terms, whether those terms reached the location and conduct at issue, how the accused received notice or otherwise learned of the order, and whether any violation was intentional. No contempt charge has been publicly reported.

The general rules governing juror conduct during a Massachusetts criminal trial protect jurors from outside communication and require the judge to investigate a possible outside influence. The Clancy judge reportedly questioned each juror about impartiality before deliberations continued. That inquiry protected the underlying trial; it did not decide the accused’s criminal case.

A Silent Video and a Secret Audio Recording Are Different

A silent recording alone does not establish witness intimidation, a wiretap violation, or contempt. A case-specific court order and the purpose and effect of the recording can independently matter. The camera alone does not answer those questions.

The Massachusetts wiretap statute, G.L. c. 272, § 99, addresses secret interception of oral or wire communications. It does not apply to silent images alone. Commonwealth v. Hyde, 434 Mass. 594 (2001). A video that secretly captures intelligible juror conversations could require a separate wiretap analysis. The public reports reviewed for this article describe video of jurors and do not allege that the accused secretly recorded any juror conversation.

The Evidence That Will Resolve the Principal Questions

The same phone may contain evidence relevant to the three principal statutory issues, but each issue remains distinct. A forensic examination may identify when the video was created, when it entered the deleted-files folder, whether it was edited or transmitted, and what associated metadata remains. The proponent must authenticate digital evidence in a Massachusetts criminal case. Authorship, completeness, and the reliability of the extraction may also matter depending on what the proponent claims the video proves and the objections raised.

Other evidence may include courthouse surveillance, the court officers’ observations, recordings of the police encounter, the exact content and distribution of the judge’s order, and testimony about whether jurors saw or later learned of the recording. The reported consent to search may also require examination of the words used, voluntariness, and scope under the rules governing illegal searches and seizures.

The evidence must answer different questions:

• For § 13B based on filming, did the accused willfully intimidate or harass jurors, either intending to interfere with the Clancy trial or acting with reckless disregard that the conduct might interfere with it?
• For § 13E based on deletion, did she delete or attempt to conceal the video for the purpose of impairing its availability in an official proceeding?
• For § 13B based on the reported statement, did she willfully make a statement capable of sending police onto a materially different investigative course, either intending to interfere with the investigation or acting with reckless disregard that the statement might do so?

The Present Legal Assessment

The publicly reported facts support a legally recognized § 13B theory by analogy. Section 13B expressly protects jurors, and Casiano establishes that directing a phone camera at an undercover officer waiting to testify can constitute intimidation when the circumstances support the required inference. The reported facts do not establish a violation as a matter of law. The differences between an accused person photographing a known undercover witness before testimony and a spectator allegedly recording jurors while claiming to wait for the defendant are substantial and require evidence rather than assumption.

The deleted-files allegation likewise supports further investigation but does not establish evidence tampering. Section 13E requires proof of the actor, the timing, and the purpose of the deletion. Recovery does not defeat an attempt theory, but recovery also does not prove an attempt.

On the public record now available, the alleged denial presents a more limited § 13B theory. A bare denial is ordinarily insufficient under Morse. An affirmative alternative account can qualify under Paquette only if it was capable of materially redirecting the investigation and was made either with the intent to interfere with the investigation or with reckless disregard that it might do so.

The pending case contains one publicly reported count under § 13B. The charge, the publicity surrounding it, and the release conditions imposed at arraignment do not decide the legal questions. Each element must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt on admissible evidence.

Attorney Joe Serpa has practiced Massachusetts criminal defense since 1995. To discuss a witness-intimidation, evidence-tampering, or related Massachusetts criminal charge confidentially, call Serpa Law Office at 617.936.0201.

Related Serpa Law Office Resources

• Massachusetts Witness Intimidation FAQs
• Massachusetts Criminal Court Practice
• Text Message and Phone Evidence FAQs
• Digital Search Warrants in Massachusetts