A jury deadlocked Friday afternoon over the sentencing of a Jones County man accused with the possession of meth amphetamine.
After hearing several hours of testimony, watching video taken at the arrest scene, and hearing closing arguments from Assistant District Attorney Kristen Martin and defense counsel Cruz Gray, the jurors walked to the jury room about five minutes until 3:00. Some 40 minutes later they informed Circuit Court Judge Dal Williamson that they were deadlocked at 6-6 and didn’t think they could reach a “guilty” or “not guilty” verdict. The judge reiterated some of the jury instructions and sent them back to the jury room with a request to the jury foreman to poll the group to see if they felt they could break the gridlock and come to a unanimous decision. They sent the judge a note a short time later indicating they thought they could work through the stalemate. However, about 15 minutes after that initial note, around 4:10 p.m., the jurors relayed another message to Judge Williamson: they could not agree on a verdict.
Judge Williamson was compelled to declare a mistrial, and Patrick Latrelle Newell walked free.
Newell had been accused of the possession of meth amphetamine that allegedly was discovered in one of his pants pockets back in 2017 when sheriff’s deputy Doug Shepherd pulled him over after he said the suspect did not use a turn signal. After pulling Newell over, the officer observed that Newell seemed nervous, which led to a canine search around his vehicle, according to testimony. When the drug dog alerted on Newell’s vehicle, officers searched his car and supposedly found some marijuana and digital scales. After the vehicle search, narcotics investigator Jared Lindsey, who had arrived at the scene as a backup officer, then patted down Newell and discovered the meth. Lindsey said that law enforcement officers James Stiglett and Carol Windham were also at the scene to assist.
According to the testimony of drug analysis expert Keith McMahon, the amount of meth allegedly confiscated at the scene and sent to his lab in Meridian to be analyzed was 6.6 grams.
Gray made an issue of the chain of custody of the substance, pointing out to the jury that one officer said he found the drug on his client at the scene, yet another officer took the drug and logged it into the system. Gray also questioned the weight of McMahon’s testimony, saying that he was a “technical reviewer” in this case and not the expert who actually examined the evidence. He also wanted to know if a fingerprint analysis had been completed on the bag the drug had arrived in at the lab. Martin countered that no fingerprint analysis had been requested on the container when it was sent to the lab, and McMahon said it was rare for that request to be made.
Gray and Martin then argued strongly against each other outside of the presence of the jury when Gray made a motion to the court for a direct judgment. He told Judge Williamson that Shepherd had no right to pull Newell over because video (police car dash camera) showed that the defendant had used a turn signal moments before he was detained, even though the officer gave that as his reason for stopping Newell. Gray called the officer’s reason a pretext, even terming it “fabricated pretextual.”
Martin said the officer had watched Newell change lanes without using his turn signal shortly before pulling him over for what he believed was a second incident of not using his blinker. As part of his reasoning for denying the motion for a direct judgment, Judge Williamson noted that members of the court had the privilege of watching the video multiple times to conclude that the defendant did use his blinker, while the officer had only a brief moment the night of the arrest to make that determination.
In his final remarks to the jury, Gray said “It seems like the officers in this case started with the conclusion that Mr. Newell was guilty and worked backward from that conclusion.”
Martin told the jurors that the evidence they should consider as the case’s strongest element was that Lindsey pulled meth from the defendant’s pocket.
Newell chose to not testify in the trial.