Claude Russell will not be going to jail any time soon, after the seven woman, five man jury failed to reach a verdict Monday night.
After roughly 10 hours of deliberations, jurors returned around 9:40pm to tell Trigg Circuit Judge C.A. Woodall III they were still at an impasse in trying to reach a verdict in the Claude Russell murder trial.
Jurors had returned earlier in the evening, around 7:50pm, and told Judge Woodall they had not reached a verdict but thought progress could be made. It was at that point that Judge Woodall ordered dinner to be brought in for the jurors. Then around 9:15pm, the jury returned to the courtroom and told Judge Woodall that they were at an impasse. Judge Woodall read the jury additional instructions and sent them back for additional discussions.
Following the mistrial decision just before 10pm, defense attorney John Stewart addressed the issue of bond.
The day began with two hours of closing arguments, and the 12 jurors going into deliberations at 11:37am.
During his closing remarks, defense attorney, John Stewart asked the jury to put an end to this and bring the case against Russell to a screeching halt, by finding him not guilty.
Meanwhile, Commonwealth’s Attorney GL Ovey told the jury as part of his closing arguments he did exactly what he set out to do during his opening statement—he proved beyond a reasonable doubt Russell was guilty of killing Chantel Humphries.
Stewart pointed the finger at Rodney Phillips and Les Tinsley, two men who knew Humphries, but Ovey says it makes no sense for the two men to bring a gun back to Russell that they just used in a murder, especially if they didn’t know it was his.
The case against Claude Russell for the death of Chantel Humphries will be put back on the docket to allow lawyers to set another trial date or move forward in some other way.
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