The jury in the Michael Dunn trial told Judge Russell Healey it is deadlocked on the murder charge related to Jordan Davis' death. Healey declared a mistrial on that charge.
The jurors found Dunn guilty on three counts of attempted second-degree murder (a lesser-included charge) and one charge of shooting or throwing deadly missiles, as charged.
State Attorney Angela Corey said in a news conference after the verdict that her office needs to talk to Davis' family but that she intends to retry Dunn on the first-degree murder charge.
Earlier in the day, the jury told Healey it was deadlocked on the murder charge. Using the so-called Allen charge, the judge instructed jurors to continue their deliberations.
Hours later, they were back in the courtroom because they had a question about whether failing to reach a verdict on the murder charge would result in the other charges being declared a mistrial, as well.
By that time, the jury had already announced it had reached a verdict on four of the five counts.
A written instruction given to jurors after that announcement said the case would be a mistrial if they failed to reach a verdict. It should have said the one count on which they couldn't agree on would be a mistrial.
Healey said that was his error.
“That’s why I had you bring that (the instruction) out because I suspected that you caught that,” he told jurors.
The jury then returned to continue its deliberations.
Less than an hour later, jurors told the judge they were hopelessly deadlocked on the murder charge.