An Arizona judge declared a mistrial in the case of an elderly rancher who shot and killed an illegal immigrant trespassing on his land.
It appeared one juror stood between George Alan Kelly and a possible life sentence in prison.
“The jury verdict was seven to acquit and one, lone holdout who was stubborn and would not listen to evidence,” Kelly’s lawyers told Fox News. “All the other jurors were angry about it.”
Jurors had begun deliberating last Thursday and were at least 15 hours into trying to resolve the case when the holdout prompted Superior Court Judge Thomas Fink to declare a mistrial on Monday, according to Fox News.
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Kelly was charged with second-degree murder and lesser counts of manslaughter, negligent homicide or aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
Kelly, 75, likely would have spent the rest of his life in jail had he been convicted of the most serious charge.
The charges sprang from the shooting death of a Mexican national, Gabriel Cuen-Buitimea, whose remains were found on Kelly’s 170-acre cattle ranch near the border town of Nogales on Jan. 30, 2023.
Cuen-Buitimea was an illegal immigrant who had been deported multiple times, local media reported.
Prosecutors asserted that he an “unarmed migrant pursuing the American Dream.”
Kelly’s lawyers, on the other hand, argued that prosecutors failed to show his gun was the murder weapon.
The defense insisted that Kelly, who was armed with an AK-47, only fired warning shots into the air at illegal border-crossers and that his wife had called the Border Patrol to report two men outfitted in camouflage and toting rifles and backpacks about 100 feet from their home.
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Kelly was the one who found the body about 115 yards from his home.
The bullet that killed Cuen-Buitimea was not recovered. Investigators did recover nine spent casings from his patio.
Fox News reported that the defense exploited weaknesses in the investigation, including the fact that the only eyewitness to
Cuen-Buitimea’s death was a Mexican cartel drug runner who had been deported from the U.S. multiple times, and a man who set up the law enforcement interview with the witness was himself a convicted felon for aggravated assault, domestic violence, and gun-running.
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Judge Fink scheduled a follow-up hearing for next Monday to hear if prosecutors want to go after Kelly again.
“They won’t wear me down,” Kelly told reporters at the courthouse on Monday when asked about possibly being tried a second time.
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