DA will retry Tellis after Pike jury was deadlocked

By John Howell
District Attorney John Champion said that Quinton Tellis will be retried when the prosecution has had a chance to catch its breath after Pike County jurors were unable to reach a unanimous decision about his guilt or innocence.
In a case that attracted international attention, Tellis was tried for capital murder in the December, 2014 burning death of Jessica Chambers. After a grueling seven day trial that began Tuesday, October 10 following jury selection at the Pike County Courthouse in Magnolia on Monday, jurors deliberated for over eight hours.
Confusion arose when the jurors returned to the Batesville courtroom and passed to Circuit Judge Gerald Chatham a sheet of paper with a statement that jurors had found Tellis not guilty.

When Judge Chatham asked if that was the unanimous decision that every juror agreed to, one spoke up and said that he did not. Jurors were immediately ushered back into the jury room, jury instructions were reviewed. The judge sent jurors back into the jury room two more times before he declared a mistrial.
Apparently the confusion arose over jurors’ misunderstanding that if the vote was not unanimous to find the defendant guilty, then he should be declared not guilty. When the judge polled jurors individually in the courtroom for the final time, the vote was seven for guilty, five for not guilty, and the mistrial was declared.
“We’re going to strengthen a few points in our prosecution that we decided were weak,” Champion said.
Champion and assistant District Attorney Jay Hale presented a chronological case that began with testimony from first responders and law enforcement, included extensive testimony from medical experts and concluded with a sophisticated presentation by U.S. Attorney Intelligence Analyst Paul Rowlett that included cell phone location data, text message content, and video surveillance footage that he said placed the defendant and victim in near proximity at the time she was burned in her car.
However, the prosecution was apparently not able to overcome the doubt of what defense attorneys Darla Palmer and Alton Peterson said was a “dying declaration” from Chambers, heard by eight or more first responders who said they heard or thought they heard her name “Eric” or “Derek” as her assailant.
The defense called no witnesses, including the defendant, who did not testify.
Following the mistrial, Palmer told reporters that she thought that Tellis was initially reluctant to admit he was with Chambers up to almost the time of her death because he had recently been released from prison and was scared that he might be sent back.
Peterson cited Tellis’ recent release from prison for causing him to want to speak with investigators in the early days after the murder because he wanted to be cooperative, not wanting to return to prison.
The prosecution presented statements and video of Tellis being questioned from several days after the murder in December, 2014 to January, 2016, in which he first admitted to being with Chambers only until midday, Dec. 6.
After investigators confronted him with evidence proving he was with the victim up to nearly the time of her death, Tellis’ changed his story.
“He was consistent in the fact that this was not a crime he committed,” Palmer told reporters outside the courthouse after the mistrial was declared.
Tellis remains at the Panola County jail while authorities decide about a retrial date, Panola County Sheriff Dennis Darby said.
He faces murder charges in Louisiana in the death of a Chinese exchange student whose debit card he was caught using after her death.