(1080 KRLD) - A mistrial has been declared in the sentencing of a former Houston area high school football coach.
This week former Alief Hastings coach David Temple was convicted, for the second time, of murdering his pregnant wife Belinda in 1999. Prosecutors say he did it to get out of the marriage and was seeing another woman. The closing arguments in the sentencing phase were made Wednesday and jurors deliberated all day Thursday and for several hours Friday. Still the jury could not reach a sentence. The judge read a note, which said "Severe violence has already been done to most of our conscious to even get this far. We believe it is a total fluke, a one in a thousand chance that this group of jurors was assembled. We know the price a mistrial carries. We know it will put families through weeks of hell again. We believe any other jury assembled could do this job properly and deliver a proper or even reasonable sentence. When two jurors are not willing to budge at all, there is nothing more we can do."
Houston attorney Brian Wice thinks those two jurors had what he calls, 'residual doubt.' "Sometimes known in the business of life as buyers remorse, led them to conclude they were going to opt for a particularly low punishment"
He says there will now be a new punishment hearing before a different jury. Temple could get anything from probation to life in prison when he's eventually sentenced.