Clancy's lawyers ask the court to probe a holdout juror. A motion is not a dismissal.

A motion to investigate a holdout juror is a request, not a misconduct finding and not a dismissal. Lindsay Clancy remains charged with murder in the deaths of her three children after a mistrial declared Sept. 4, when the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict, with reporting describing 11 of 12 ready to clear criminal responsibility on a postpartum-psychosis theory and one holdout. She remains in a psychiatric hospital, and prosecutors have not said whether they will retry. A reported split and a hospital placement are status, not a verdict.

Attorney Kevin Reddington's motion, filed Friday and made public Monday, asks Judge William Sullivan to investigate holdout juror Michael Desronvil. The filing alleges cellphone use during deliberations, which is prohibited, and it questions Desronvil's truthfulness on a jury questionnaire and when the judge questioned jurors the day before the trial ended. It seeks call and text records from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on each deliberation day. Those are requests in a paper. They are not findings that a phone was used, that a questionnaire answer was false, or that an answer to the judge was untrue. Desronvil has not been accused of wrongdoing for his jury service. His lawyer, Edward Paltzik, called the motion an attack on a lone holdout and on the Constitution. A lawyer's characterization is argument. It is not a ruling.

A separate Monday motion by Martin Weinberg asks the judge to dismiss the case rather than retry it. The argument is that the mistrial should not have been declared, and that Desronvil should have been replaced by an alternate after a foreperson complaint about reasonable doubt. A dismissal motion is a request to end the case. It does not end the case until a judge says so. A spokesperson for Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz had no comment. No comment is not a decision on a retrial. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.