Surprise plea deal made in murder trial
After jury deadlocked, man pleads guilty to killing transgender woman, gets 12 years
A man on trial in the the murder of a transgender woman pleads guilty after the jury told the trial judge they were deadlocked and couldn’t reach a verdict.
A Galena Park man on trial for murder Thursday pleaded guilty after his Harris County jury told the trial judge they were deadlocked and couldn’t reach a verdict.
The surprising move resulted in Tariq Lackings, 32, being sentenced to 12 years in prison for the murder of 34year-old Shante Thompson, a transgender woman who was killed at a Midtown street corner in in 2016. Thompson is identified in court records as Robert Isaac.
Lackings was facing the possibility of life in prison but will serve at least six years before he is eligible for parole. He cut the plea deal after jurors told the judge they were split 10 to 2 and could not reach a verdict.
In an even more unusual twist, Lackings later asked the judge to let him withdraw his guilty plea after learning that 10 of the jurors had voted in favor of finding him innocent and that only two believed he was guilty.
“That will be denied,” said visiting state District Judge Reagan Clark of the request to withdraw the plea.
The motive behind a massive street brawl was a long-simmering dispute between Lackings, a Galena Park cocaine dealer, and Thompson, according to testimony.
Thompson and her friend, 33year-old Willie Sims, were beat with crowbars and homemade clubs before being stabbed and shot at the corner of Fannin and Dennis on April 10, 2016.
Patrick Riggins, a friend of Thompson, gave a victim impact statement and told Lackings how his life had been affected after the loss.
“I lost a friend, someone I truly loved and someone who loved me,” he said. “In spite of the sentence, only God knows what happened. And you will see God. That’s where the real punishment will come from.”
The plea came minutes before the presiding judge could have declared a mistrial because of a hung jury.
The jury, which deliberated about seven hours since starting Wednesday afternoon, sent out four notes over two days asking for key testimony to be reread and for other evidence about the late-night melee. During deliberations on Thursday, the jury sent out a note saying they were split 10 to 2 and were not able to change anyone’s mind.
After the split became known, the defense and prosecutors hammered out a plea deal, and it was accepted by the judge.
Prosecutors said after the trial that it was a difficult case to prove, adding that because plea bargains always involve a compromise, the outcome was difficult for almost everyone to accept.
“We certainly tried to put on the best case we could,” said Assistant Harris County District Attorney Jennifer Meriwether, who tried the case with Aaron Chapman. “It’s a tough situation.”
The charges against Lackings were not filed as a hate crime. Alleging that an act was committed as a hate crime can bump up the possible punishment to the next penalty tier, such as from a second-degree felony to a first-degree felony.
But bringing hate crime enhancements is rare in Texas because first-degree felonies, like murder or aggravated assault causing serious bodily injury, already carry the possibility of life in prison, so there is no reason for prosecutors to add another element that they would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.
And in this case, there was no evidence that Thompson was targeted because she was transgender.
Lackings admitted to orchestrating the street brawl on a corner street in Midtown where two groups met to settle an earlier confrontation in a fast-food restaurant.
Defense attorney Paul Morgan argued that there was not enough forensic evidence to convict anyone and said the eyewitnesses were lying to hide their culpability.
And when the jurors appeared to head toward a mistrial, the defense agreed to a plea deal. After hearing that jurors were leaning toward an innocent verdict, Morgan said the plea deal limits the chances that Lackings could end up going to prison for life.
“The jurors had reasonable doubts, but there’s a risk management that comes with these things,” he said. “The decisions (the District Attorney’s Office makes) about whether to retry are always a mystery.”
Even though the split was in favor of Lackings, Morgan said, the jurors said afterward that they were deadlocked with one guilty vote refusing to budge. That refusal would have triggered a mistrial because of a hung jury.
If that had happened and prosecutors had decided to go back to trial, Lackings again would have been facing the possibility of life in prison.
Lackings was originally charged with capital murder for both deaths, but prosecutors dropped the allegations surrounding Sims’ death and proceeded in trying Lackings for Thompson’s slaying.
The plea deal means the case and any related allegations are completely disposed. The trial began last Friday with jury selection.