NORRISTOWN (KYW Newsradio) — A Montgomery County jury was unable to reach a unanimous decision on homicide charges in the trial of two 23-year-olds accused of shooting and killing a 25-year-old man. The judge declared a mistrial.
After about eight hours of deliberations over two days, jurors sent a note to the judge saying they had reached an impasse in deliberations. About an hour later, when the judge declared a mistrial, those jurors were sent home. They looked frustrated and annoyed as they left the courthouse.
Prosecutor Kathleen McLaughlin says she’s disappointed, as she felt she had presented enough evidence to convict Cody Reed and Marquise Johnson in the shooting death of Daquan Tucker on the Schuylkill River Trail last March.
“The commonwealth will be retrying this case, and will be again asking for a verdict of guilty on first degree murder.”
Prosecutors said it was a planned execution, but defense attorneys countered that the case has a lot of theories and not enough facts.
McLaughlin conceded their case is built on circumstantial evidence, but she argued that it points to only one thing: Johnson and Reed worked together to lure Tucker to the trail and shot him three times in the head.
Tucker’s body was found by a cyclist around 9 a.m., about 12 hours after his girlfriend last talked to him.
Defense attorney Dennis Caglia is also disappointed by the mistrial, as he thought they had put up enough reasonable doubt for a not guilty verdict.
The defense said that while prosecutors showed enough video and phone records to make “someone’s eyes glaze over,” they still don’t know exactly what happened.
“I think it was an issue that there was not a firearm retrieved from the beginning. I think it was an issue. There was a lack of motive. And direct evidence,” said defense attorney Brendan Campbell. “I think that probably was the biggest thing.”
The attorneys also pointed out that Reed was friends with Tucker, and prosecutors never gave any indication why he would have wanted to kill him.
“There were other people mentioned that had contact with the victim. And the victim, himself unfortunately, was armed and perhaps could have gotten shot with his own weapon, but people just didn't know.”
Johnson and Reed remain held without bail on the murder charges awaiting a date for new trial.