Guests - Edward Bartlett, Laurie Moore
Edward Bartlett: A Holdout Juror, a Mistrial and a Warning About the Jury System
Kathleen Winn opened with a question that reaches far beyond one controversial murder case: can Americans still serve on a jury, weigh the evidence, vote according to conscience and return to their lives without becoming political targets?
Edward Bartlett, president of Domestic Abuse and Violence International Alliance, joined Winn to discuss the aftermath of the Lindsay Clancy trial and what he sees as a growing threat to due process. Bartlett’s organization represents more than 200 groups across dozens of countries and advocates for fairness, equal treatment and due-process protections in domestic-violence policy.
The Clancy case ended in a mistrial after a five-week proceeding. According to Bartlett, 11 jurors favored acquittal while one juror, Michael Desronville, believed Clancy should be convicted. The disagreement itself was exactly what the jury system is designed to accommodate. What happened afterward concerned Bartlett much more.
Several jurors began speaking publicly about the deliberations. The holdout juror’s identity then became public, along with personal details about his race, religion and politics. Bartlett said Desronville soon received hostile calls, unwanted visitors and death threats.
That crossed a dangerous line.
“You have the right to carefully evaluate the evidence,” Bartlett said. “Secondly, you have the right to vote your conscience. And third, you have the right to not be later harassed or get death threats for however you did vote.”
For Bartlett, the principle is bigger than whether someone agrees with Desronville’s conclusion. A jury system means little if jurors believe an unpopular vote could expose them and their families to retaliation.
“This is a blow to the jury system,” he said, “and by implication, a threat to our entire system of law.”
Winn said the juror deserved credit precisely because he refused to surrender his judgment simply because he was outnumbered. Twelve jurors heard the same case. Eleven reached one conclusion. One reached another.
That is not a defect in the system, she argued. It is the system.
The Clancy Case and the Question of Accountability
The underlying facts made the case emotionally explosive. Clancy killed her three children; the dispute involved her mental condition and criminal responsibility.
Winn repeatedly acknowledged evidence concerning Clancy’s psychiatric condition, treatment and efforts to get help. She also stressed that mental illness and accountability are not mutually exclusive.
“This mother did kill her children, and that is not in question,” Winn said.
Her concern was that public sympathy for Clancy had begun to eclipse the children themselves and, potentially, the basic principle that taking innocent life still requires legal accountability. Eleven jurors were persuaded by the defense. Desronville was not.
Bartlett took an even more skeptical view of the defense’s characterization of Clancy’s condition. He disputed the use of postpartum psychosis and argued that the evidence more clearly demonstrated depression. That was his interpretation of the case, but his larger point was that courts must distinguish carefully among diagnoses rather than allowing emotionally powerful labels to substitute for evidence.
“Be thoughtful and be science-based,” Bartlett said.
Winn said there may ultimately be several legitimate ways for the legal system to account for serious mental illness—incarceration is not the only possible outcome—but some form of responsibility must remain.
The larger fear expressed by both was normalization. Bartlett said he had seen what he described as copycat cases and worried about what happens when an extraordinary crime becomes culturally reframed as understandable or excusable.
“No one should condone murder,” Winn said.
Bartlett Says Due Process Is Losing Ground
Bartlett widened the lens from Clancy to what he considers an international erosion of due-process principles.
He pointed to slogans such as “Believe Women” and “Believe the Victim,” arguing that however well-intentioned they may sound, they can undermine the presumption of innocence when imported into legal proceedings.
Courts are not supposed to begin by believing one side automatically. They are supposed to examine evidence.
“We have to have a presumption of innocence,” Bartlett said. “We have to follow these due-process protections.”
He described that principle as essential to democratic society and warned that challenges to it are appearing outside the United States as well.
For Winn, the subject connects to a broader problem she sees throughout the American justice system: politics and activism increasingly entering institutions that should remain focused on facts, evidence and law.
A juror should not be pressured into a politically acceptable vote. A prosecutor should not decide a case based on ideological fashion. And a defendant or accuser should not automatically be believed because of sex, identity or public sympathy.
Domestic Violence, False Allegations and Male Victims
Bartlett then turned to the work of his organization.
He argued that domestic violence is frequently presented as an almost exclusively male-on-female problem when research, in his interpretation, shows substantial victimization of men as well. Bartlett described domestic violence as an “equal opportunity problem” and said his organization wants public policy to reflect that reality.
“Men are just as likely to be victims of domestic violence as women,” Bartlett said, presenting his organization’s reading of the research.
He also criticized what he sees as increasingly expansive definitions of abuse. Physical violence is clear. But policy discussions now regularly include psychological, financial and even spiritual abuse, categories Bartlett believes can become so broad that ordinary relationship conflict is transformed into a legal accusation.
His greatest concern is false allegations.
Bartlett pointed to International Falsely Accused Day, observed September 15, and said demonstrations had taken place internationally. He cited Mexico as one country where activists are challenging domestic-violence policies they believe disadvantage men and make false allegations easier to weaponize.
Winn connected the issue to divorce and custody disputes. She has seen cases in which protective orders become part of battles between parents, sometimes involving parental alienation. False accusations, she said, do more than harm the person accused. They consume court resources and can make judges and prosecutors more skeptical when genuine victims desperately need help.
“When there’s a real allegation, the false allegations take up time, energy and resources of the court system,” Winn said.
Bartlett agreed and said false accusations also destabilize families.
“We need to support the family every way we can right now,” he said. “And one way to do that is to try to discourage false allegations of domestic violence.”
A Justice System Worth Protecting
Winn closed the conversation with Bartlett by returning to the institution itself.
America’s jury system can be messy. Jurors disagree. Mistrials happen. Verdicts frustrate people. But those imperfections are preferable to a system in which political authorities simply announce guilt.
That only works if citizens are willing to serve.
And citizens will be less willing to serve if doing the job honestly can result in doxxing, threats and public campaigns designed to punish them afterward.
Winn tied the issue to her broader concern about public safety in Tucson and Pima County. Police can make arrests, but law enforcement is only one part of the chain. Prosecutors, judges, juries and corrections all have to function.
When one piece breaks down, the public feels the result.
Bartlett’s message was ultimately straightforward: protect the presumption of innocence, protect jurors, discourage false accusations and insist that the legal system remain focused on evidence rather than activism.
Laurie Moore: Parents, Not Politicians, Should Control Sex Education
Retired educator Laurie Moore joined Winn for a conversation that began with education and quickly expanded into parental rights, school spending, reading, career preparation and Arizona’s ballot.
The first target was Texas Democratic U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico, whose comments about sex education drew criticism from Winn and Moore.
Texas moved from an opt-out system to an opt-in system for human-sexuality instruction. Parents must affirmatively consent before their children participate. Winn praised that approach because it forces schools to obtain permission rather than assuming it.
She cited figures indicating that roughly 78 percent of parents chose to participate, leaving about 22 percent who did not.
Talarico had expressed concern that a significant number of students could therefore miss sex education. Winn saw the same numbers differently.
“What it tells me is 22 percent of the parents are paying attention and they want that responsibility,” she said.
Moore agreed and argued that schools have no business treating parents as obstacles between educators and children.
She also wants much greater parental visibility into what happens inside classrooms.
“Parents need to be in the classroom,” Moore said. “Because if you’re not, anything goes.”
The two were particularly critical of sexual and gender-related instruction for younger children and argued that schools should concentrate on age-appropriate academics rather than ideological or sexual content.
Bring Back the Parents
Moore remembers an education culture where parent-teacher organizations, classroom volunteers and “room mothers” were ordinary parts of school life.
She wants that involvement back.
The more parents are physically present and connected to teachers, she argued, the harder it becomes for controversial material to be introduced without anyone noticing. Just as importantly, involved parents understand the school’s culture, know the teachers and can spot problems before they become crises.
Winn pointed to her own family. Her daughter substitutes at her children’s school, knows many of the students and is immersed in what is actually happening there.
That, Winn said, is what parental engagement looks like.
The two also criticized political and cultural efforts involving drag performances, transgender issues and sexuality in schools and public institutions. Their argument was not that children should be shielded from every difficult subject forever. It was that parents—not schools, elected officials or activists—should decide when and how those conversations occur.
For Moore, the fight is fundamentally about authority.
Who raises the child?
Arizona Is Spending on Education—but the Results Are Failing
From parental rights, the conversation moved to academic performance.
Winn repeatedly emphasized Arizona’s poor national education ranking and asked how a state whose largest budget commitment is education can continue producing such disappointing outcomes.
“The biggest budget item on the Arizona budget is education, and we’re last in the country,” Winn said. “Clearly something’s not going right.”
Moore’s answer was that money alone cannot fix broken instruction.
She described a gradual shift from achievement toward equity, from mastery toward social promotion and from individual accountability toward group work and open-book testing.
Students once studied material, memorized it and demonstrated that they knew it. Moore believes too many modern classrooms have removed the very struggle through which students learn how to learn.
She recalled giving students study guides and discovering they often had not reviewed them. Instead of simply allowing them to fail, she made them study immediately—reading material aloud to one another, reading it silently and then taking the test.
“They’re very smart,” Moore said. “But they don’t know how to do things to retain information.”
That, to her, is teaching: identify the gap, teach the skill, practice it and then demand performance.
Proposition 320: Put the Money Back in the Classroom
That philosophy fed directly into Proposition 320.
Winn described the measure as requiring certain school districts to spend at least 60 percent of their operational budgets on direct instructional expenses, as defined by the auditor general, with funding consequences for districts that fail to comply.
Both women strongly favored the idea.
Moore said school systems have become top-heavy with highly compensated administrators while classroom teachers routinely buy pencils, backpacks and supplies with their own money.
During her teaching career, she remembered district officials visiting classrooms, shaking hands and moving on while earning salaries far above those of classroom teachers.
Meanwhile, Moore was shopping sales during summer break so her students would have what they needed when school resumed.
She questioned where all the advertised per-pupil spending was actually going.
Winn connected that directly to the Arizona Bowl’s teacher-recognition program, which provides classroom grants funded through charitable support rather than taxes. Teachers can be nominated to receive $1,000 for classroom needs.
That contrast frustrated both women: Tucson is an extraordinarily generous community, yet government systems still appear unable to direct enough money to the teacher standing in front of students.
Reading, Phonics and the Joy of Actually Accomplishing Something
Moore’s most animated moments came when she talked about reading.
She taught phonics. She used repetition. She brought in jokes, riddles and greeting cards because children were more willing to practice when the words made them laugh.
Some students began several grade levels behind.
Moore would give them reading passages, cover the grade-level marker and have them practice until they could read the passage fluently. Only then would she reveal the level they had mastered.
“I had kids that started out at third-grade reading level, and they were reading at a sixth-grade level,” Moore said.
Their faces, she remembered, “would light up like Christmas.”
That experience shaped her central educational philosophy.
“Set the bar higher and they will meet it.”
Moore rejected the assumption that demanding less is compassionate. Children know when they have actually achieved something. Removing standards deprives them of that experience.
She remembered competitive boys coming into her classroom during lunch because they wanted to be timed while reading.
“They were on fire to learn,” she said.
Winn recalled her own childhood summers spent reading entire book series and participating in library reading challenges. Reading was not merely an academic requirement; it expanded imagination and created independence.
Both women believe schools need to recover that culture.
Technology Is a Tool, Not a Substitute for Learning
Moore is not opposed to technology, but she believes schools made a serious mistake when screens began replacing direct instruction.
Putting a child in front of software that talks, sings or reads aloud is not the same as teaching the child to read.
“Paper and pencil and memory skills—you know, developing your brain and your mind and having it all work together—that’s how you learn,” Moore said.
Winn agreed. Artificial intelligence can be useful, but students still need actual intelligence underneath it.
That means literacy, mathematics, comprehension and the ability to think without a device doing the work first.
School Should Prepare Students for Work
Moore wants schools to become far more practical beginning in middle and high school.
Students’ interests change as they mature. Instead of pretending every teenager should follow the same academic path, she wants schools to use interest inventories, job shadowing and mentorship to expose students to real careers.
A student might explore three different fields during high school. By graduation, Moore would like businesses that participated in the mentoring program to offer entry-level jobs to students who performed well.
Imagine graduating not only with a diploma, she said, but with an employer standing beside you offering a job.
That would change the meaning of graduation.
Counselors, in Moore’s view, should be making those connections now—helping students understand which college programs lead to viable careers and which skilled trades or direct-employment opportunities may be better choices.
Winn agreed that the objective should be competence and independence rather than simply funneling every student toward a four-year degree.
“We used to value achievement and excellence in education,” Winn said.
The Superintendent Race and Arizona’s School Direction
Winn also discussed the statewide race for superintendent of public instruction and argued that Arizona needs to keep education policy in Republican hands.
She praised Kimberly Yee and contrasted her with the Democratic alternative, whom Winn described as personally pleasant but more liberal politically.
For Winn, the difference is primarily about school choice and curriculum.
Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program has become a national model for parental choice, she said, while Democrats continue seeking restrictions on it. More than 100,000 families have chosen ESAs, which Winn interprets as a direct vote of no confidence in parts of the traditional public-school system.
“If our schools are failing,” she argued, government should not respond by restricting parents’ alternatives.
Moore agreed that the solution is to raise performance, not trap families inside a system that is not working for their child.
Proposition 144: Voter ID and Election Administration
Education eventually led into Arizona’s constitutional amendments.
Winn highlighted Proposition 144, which she described as requiring voters—including mail voters—to provide government-issued identification while making additional changes to election administration and campaign-finance rules.
She framed the measure as an opportunity to place voter-identification requirements more firmly into the Arizona Constitution.
For Winn, the issue is straightforward: voting is a fundamental right, and verifying that the person casting a ballot is legally eligible should be treated as a normal safeguard rather than an ideological offense.
Moore connected that debate to citizenship, arguing that rights and responsibilities should go together.
She also offered a far more controversial proposal of her own: people receiving certain forms of government assistance should temporarily lose voting privileges because they are being supported by taxpayers. She exempted disabled people and veterans in describing the idea.
That proposal was Moore’s personal opinion, not part of Proposition 144, but it reflected her larger argument that citizenship includes obligations as well as benefits.
Proposition 142: DEI and Equal Treatment
Winn then turned to Proposition 142, which she described as strengthening Arizona’s constitutional prohibitions against preferential treatment or discrimination by government based on race, ethnicity and other classifications, while restricting DEI policies.
Moore made her position unmistakable.
“DEI stands for ‘didn’t earn it,’” she said.
Her criticism centered on quotas and preferences. She argued that race-based systems ultimately replace one form of discrimination with another and said institutions should hire or admit the most qualified person regardless of race, sex or sexual orientation.
Winn connected that argument back to education.
If schools artificially prop up students rather than developing their skills, she said, those students may eventually enter a world that no longer offers the same accommodations.
“You are enabling them. You’re not educating them,” Winn said.
For both women, equal opportunity means setting the same expectation: learn, work, improve and compete.
Moore’s First Fix for Pima County Schools: English
Asked what she would change first if given the power to remake Pima County schools, Moore offered an answer she knew would generate controversy.
English.
She argued that classrooms become significantly harder to manage when teachers must accommodate many students who do not speak English proficiently, particularly when stronger students end up informally translating or teaching classmates.
The student who speaks English best should not become the teacher simply because the school lacks sufficient resources, Moore said.
She also tied public education to legal status, arguing that taxpayer-funded services should primarily serve citizens and legal residents.
Those views led into a broader discussion of immigration, assimilation and national identity. Moore said people coming to America should embrace the country, understand its Constitution and learn to speak, read and write English.
Her larger point was cultural as much as educational: a nation cannot assimilate newcomers if it is unwilling to articulate what they are assimilating into.
Proposition 425 and Pima County Spending
The conversation repeatedly circled back to Pima County Proposition 425.
Winn has consistently described the measure as a request for a “blank check” because it would increase the county’s expenditure authority.
She urged voters not to give county leaders permanent access to greater spending simply because the current board wants it.
For Winn, the measure illustrates the same problem she sees in education: government frequently argues that poor outcomes prove it needs more money rather than demonstrating that existing resources have been managed well.
Moore agreed and argued that voters should examine what county government is already spending before expanding its authority.
The question is not whether every public program is bad. It is whether taxpayers should reward poor management with a larger budget.
Immigration, Housing and the Political Divide
Late in the discussion, Moore connected immigration to housing, employment and political power.
She argued that large numbers of illegal immigrants inevitably compete for jobs and housing and place greater demand on public services. Winn and Moore also criticized Democratic rhetoric that, in their view, blurs the distinction between legal immigration and illegal entry.
Moore used much sharper language, accusing Democratic leaders of moving increasingly toward socialism and communism. She argued that traditional Democrats need to decide whether the modern party still represents their values.
Winn said her recent high school reunion gave her a more hopeful perspective.
Republicans and Democrats spent the evening together. They agreed where they could, disagreed where they could not, and nobody treated political differences as a reason to destroy relationships.
“We were all grown up,” Winn said.
That, she suggested, is something the larger culture could use more of.
One Generation Away
Winn and Moore closed on generational responsibility.
Their generation remembers an America where schools emphasized reading, math, achievement, prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance; where civic institutions commanded more trust; and where political disagreement did not automatically make someone an enemy.
They do not want younger Americans simply ordered to agree with them. They want them taught what those institutions were designed to protect.
Moore invoked Ronald Reagan’s warning that freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.
For her, that generation is not theoretical anymore.
“We’re here right now,” she said.
Grandparents and parents therefore have an obligation to explain the country to younger people without frightening or indoctrinating them—to teach that rights come with duties and that doing the right thing is not always comfortable.
“Sometimes doing what’s right is hard,” Moore said. “But it’s worth it.”
Her final suggestion to President Trump was pure Laurie Moore: put the administration’s accomplishments on billboards across the country.
One billboard would not be enough, she joked. Use a series. Put the message where people who do not listen to political radio or podcasts will see it while driving to work.
Make the argument visually. Repeat it. Let people talk about it.
It was a fitting conclusion to a conversation centered on education.
Teach clearly.
Repeat what matters.
Set the bar high.
And trust people to rise to it.