A Baltimore jury reached an impasse deliberating the case of a teen accused of carrying out a 2023 shooting at Edmondson Village Shopping Center that left 16-year-old Deanta Dorsey dead and four other teens wounded.

Citing the deadlocked jury, Circuit Judge Robert Taylor Jr. declared a mistrial around 3:15 p.m. Thursday, releasing the jurors from their service.

Before sending the jury home, Taylor asked the jury foreperson if the panel reached a unanimous verdict on any of the 30-plus charges.

“Unfortunately, no, your honor,” the foreperson responded.

Taylor then asked the foreperson if more deliberation would help, and the foreperson queried his peers about considering the case for 15 more minutes. All of them shook their heads.

The mistrial, which came after about five hours of deliberation, beginning Wednesday afternoon, followed a four-day trial where prosecutors presented more than 20 witnesses, hours of video footage and scores of documents.

Prosecutors said Spears and his cousin Bryan Johnson, also 18, targeted Dorsey, who was outside of the Popeyes at the shopping center during his lunch hour at Edmondson-Westside High School, when they opened fire into a crowd of students before noon Jan. 4, 2023. Four others were struck by bullets, their injuries ranging in severity.Both are charged with first-degree murder and four counts each of attempted first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit, as well as assault and firearms offenses. Spears stood trial this week, while Johnson is not due in court until December.

Thiru Vignarajah, an attorney for Dorsey’s relatives, said in a statement following the mistrial that the “family has a deep reservoir of strength and patience.”

“They’ve waited a long time for justice, and they can wait a little longer,” Vignarajah said. “Holdout jurors are not uncommon in Baltimore, and the evidence presented in open court this week renews the faith of this family that justice will ultimately be done.”

Spears attorney, Brandon Taylor, said he was disappointed about the mistrial and the prospect of having to go to trial again.

During trial, Taylor described the daytime shooting as a tragedy but maintained his client was innocent of all charges. Spears had no motive to attack Dorsey nor any connection to the late teenager or any of the other victims, he added.

“Convicting an innocent kid for a crime is not justice,” Taylor told jurors.

The defense attorney added the result was not completely surprising given early signs of impasse from the jury. At one point when the court clerk opened the jury deliberation room to return a note, jurors could be heard yelling.

“They were stuck within two hours,” Taylor said.

Baltimore State’s Attorney Ivan Bates did not immediately commit to retrying Spears in a statement, even though his prosecutor on the case already was beginning to discuss the possibility of a new trial date in court.

“We will examine the case and evidence presented at trial, as well as any additional evidence, and after speaking with the victims’ families, determine the best path forward to ensure justice for all,” said Bates, a Democrat.

The state’s case was made up of circumstantial evidence, largely relying on surveillance videos detectives gathered from cameras throughout Southwest Baltimore. The footage showed two people clad in black, who prosecutors alleged to be Spears and Johnson, meet up before the shooting, walk to the shopping center together, open fire on a group of students and flee.

Detectives traced the two suspects back to Johnson’s apartment about two hours after the shooting using surveillance cameras and license plate readers, which revealed that they used a ride-sharing application to move about that day. A camera in Johnson’s apartment building captured closer images of the pair. They were wearing lighter colored clothes when they returned.

After investigators searched Spears’ house in the 4000 block of Edmondson Ave. on Feb. 15, 2023, they spoke with his mother, Nicole Boyd, in an interview room in the homicide unit at Baltimore Police headquarters downtown. It was there that they confronted her with several still shots from the footage that led them to Spears and Johnson.

When they showed her a photo of one suspect in close proximity to the shooting scene, dressed mostly in black and wearing a balaclava, Boyd said she didn’t recognize the person pictured. She subsequently identified her son from the photo taken from Johnson’s apartment building, a prosecutor said.

As Taylor noted, no DNA or fingerprints linked Spears to the crime.

But detectives said they did find some clues in the basement where Spears lived.

Near a mattress, investigators found a pair of navy blue Under Armor pants with white stripes that resembled the pants one suspect wore during the crime.

In closing arguments, Taylor pointed out that all the witnesses who called 911 described the shooters as being dressed in all black. He argued blue pants would’ve stood out against a black jacket.

They also found two boxes of 9mm ammunition in a backpack. One box was full with 50 rounds. Another box, Blazer brand, had only nine cartridges left.

Crime scene technicians had picked up nine 9mm Blazer casings among the 36 cartridge casings, bullets or bullet fragments recovered at the scene.

In a different part of the basement, in a storage box, detectives found a 9mm Taurus handgun loaded with an extended magazine. They never submitted it for firearms analysis.

Taylor skewered the authorities for not testing the gun in his cross examination of lead detective Marcus Smothers and during closing arguments. He said analysis of bullets test-fired from the gun would have yielded evidence either implicating or absolving his client.

Smothers testified that every gun recovered by Baltimore Police is test fired and that the casings from the test fires are submitted into a law enforcement database, the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network, which compares the test-fired casings to those picked up in other crimes. If the system says there’s a potential match, he said, they order further analysis.

The detective said the system indicated no such match in this case.

The broad daylight shooting of five Edmondson high students prompted frantic 911 calls.

“Somebody just walked up on a group of kids and shot a whole group of kids,” one woman told a 911 operator, according to a recording of the call played in court. “Oh, my god,” she added. “The one that’s laying on the ground is not breathing. The one that’s shot in the neck, he has no pulse. Someone is giving him CPR now.”

Jeremy Slack, who was the assistant principal at Edmondson High, was in the school parking lot speaking to parents when he heard gunshots in the shopping center. Knowing there could be students present, he rushed across the street. He testified he used a belt as a tourniquet on one teen’s leg before an officer’s body-camera footage showed him performing CPR on Dorsey.

“I was able to hear a whisper, something similar to ‘help,’ ” he said.

An ambulance took Dorsey to University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where he died. The 16-year-old had been shot 16 times and a forensic pathologist with the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Baltimore ruled his death a homicide by multiple gunshot wounds.

Dr. Edernst Noncent testified 13 bullets entered and exited Dorsey, while three more wounds were associated with bullets the doctor recovered from his body. One shot hit Dorsey in the head, piercing his skull and damaging his brain, where the bullet lodged.

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