Oh look, people have been saying mean things about Sue O’Connell. Isn’t that just awful? What kind of a world is this, anyway? You can’t even try to ruin a man’s life anymore without suffering a backlash.
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O’Connell is the NBC Boston reporter (though she insists on X that she is “a COMMENTATOR, not a reporter”) who played an instrumental part of the campaign against Michael P. Desronvil, the holdout juror who prevented Lindsay Clancy from being found innocent of murdering her three children and effectively being cut loose. O’Connell covered the entire trial from jury selection on. Her reportage… sorry, “commentary,” appears to have been fair enough — particularly regarding Patrick Clancy, whom she actively defended from conspiracy hogs.
But boy, did that end quick. As soon as the verdict came down, O’Connell went into demon mode, accusing Desronvil of having a “history of domestic violence accusations” backed up by “court documents and interviews with family members.” We all know where that went. Commentators don’t have to dig as deeply as reporters, I guess.
She also swung into open activism, not a good look for a reporter or commentator either:
“If you’re mad about the Clancy outcome and live in MA, get off social media and start lobbying your lawmakers for change.”
But perhaps most egregious was her blatant trolling for jurors:
Did you serve as a juror on the Lindsay Clancy Trial?
Thank you.
I appreciate your sacrifice, hard work, and service.
I’m Sue OConnell.
You may have seen me in the courtroom.
I’d love to talk.
Variants of that appeared on both X and TikTok, and, I suppose, other social media as well.
We know where that led: the notorious interview of the three jurors who misrepresented Desronvil’s engagement with the case and his behavior in the jury room, triggering frivolous and nasty-tempered females across the worldwide web. Not to mention the clip in which one juror was evidently asked to change her answer, by whom I’m sure I have no idea. But there’s O’Connell, repeating the question — Should there be a new trial? — in the same exact tone of voice, and there’s the juror in the gray pixie cut, answering in complete contradiction of what she had previously said. How many times did this happen?
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So it should come as no surprise, to O’Connell above all, that she’s been targeted much the same as Michael Desronvil.
Regarding her response video, there are a couple of elements that make it worse than it had to be. First, there’s the fake casual setup: here’s Sue, just sittin’ around on a bench, wearing a t-shirt with a vest over it, like one of the Dead End Kids. Just headed for her break, I guess, but sure, she’ll take a minute to say a few words to the little people…
This kind of thing got old in the late 1960s when it was first introduced, and it hasn’t improved in the sixty years since. Everybody knows it’s fake, and along with all the other media fakery, everybody is tired of it.
Far worse is the hypocrisy. This woman bears serious responsibility for dumping tens of thousands of screaming harpies on the head of an innocent man, based largely on incompetent reportage. Now she wants us all to commiserate over a few nasty emails (none of which, I just now realize, are ever actually quoted). Well, Madame Commentator, it doesn’t work that way. There is such a thing as “karma,” and that is what you are experiencing right now. Turnabout is fair play. And while I don’t condone death threats, I doubt that you are experiencing even a small fraction of what you helped unleash on Michael Desronvil.
Though that may change. It seems clear from the record that Desronvil has grounds for legal action. I have doubts that either O’Connell or NBCBoston can hide behind Sullivan on this one. O’Connell may yet look back on these as the halcyon days when all she had to worry about were a handful of internet loons rather than summonses and subpoenas.
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