Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, has offered the unidentified holdout juror in the Lindsay Clancy trial “asylum” in the state if he comes under harassment after reports that he once faced a criminal charge for alleged domestic violence and is under an active restraining order.

DeSantis accused the media of launching a smear campaign against the juror. “If the juror is being harassed, Florida will provide asylum – I’m sure he’d be welcomed and appreciated,” DeSantis wrote on social media.

NBC10 Boston reported on Friday that the juror was charged in 2021 for allegedly assaulting his then wife after his 13-year-old nephew told police he saw him grab her by the throat and throw her into a dresser. The charges was later dismissed.

“A man objected to allowing a woman to kill her three young kids and get away with it, so NBC is trying to smear that juror, whose identity should be protected,” DeSantis wrote on X in response to the NBC report that he called “another low for legacy media.”

But the revelations about the juror come days after the triple-murder trial ended in a mistrial after seven days of deadlocked deliberations. It was revealed in court that 11 of 12 jurors would vote for finding Clancy not guilty by lack of criminal responsibility in the alleged murder of her three children, five-year-old Cora, three-year-old Dawson and eight-month-old Callan.

Kevin Reddington, Clancy’s attorney, argued she was not criminally responsible because she was overmedicated and suffering from postpartum psychosis.

The lone holdout juror, the jury foreperson said, had expressed reasonable doubt over the prosecution’s case that Clancy planned to strangle her children and knew right from wrong, but she claims the juror had refused to “follow the law” when it came to deliberations.

Reddington has said he plans to ask for the case to be thrown out at a status hearing on 29 September based on double jeopardy grounds.

In the days since, jurors have come forward to describe the lone holdout. Paula Devlin told CBS Mornings on Friday that the lone holdout was a Black man and the only person of color on the jury. “Everybody else was white,” she said.

Roni Carlson, the jury foreperson, told NBC Boston that the holdout juror “admitted he had reasonable doubt and I started filling out the forms”, but the holdout juror added: “But I’m still not going to say that she’s not guilty by reason of insanity.”

Nick Dargie, 25, said that after the mistrial ruling, jurors agreeing to find Clancy not guilty “felt defeated. We spent seven weeks on this trial, almost two months of, you know, all of our lives dedicated to it.”

Questions are now likely to be asked about the questionnaire jurors would have been asked to fill out, including if they had ever been arrested, charged with a crime or served with a court order.

“I don’t see how they would’ve allowed him to be a member of this jury,” said Michael Coyne, NBC10 Boston’s chief legal analyst. “I don’t see how, if those questions had been answered correctly, one side or the other would’ve taken the chance with allowing him to be seated.”