Mistrial declared in Temple’s sentencing after no consensus
Result comes after jurors deadlocked 19 hours; guilty verdict will still stand
Jurors failed to reach a unanimous decision Friday on the punishment of David Temple, ending a month-long retrial for the convicted murderer and forcing a new jury panel be convened to determine sentencing in the killing of the ex-football coach’s pregnant wife.
The “unprecedented” move is the latest in the 20-year saga since the January 1999 murder of Belinda Temple, a special education teacher at Katy High School who was weeks away from giving birth to the couple’s second child.
State District Judge Kelli Johnson called the mistrial in the punishment phase after the 12 jurors remained deadlocked after almost 19 hours of deliberation over three days. The guilty verdict will still stand, Johnson said, and a new jury will likely come together in the spring to determine a possible prison sentence.
The jury foreman told the judge Friday morning that a consensus was impossible, considering two jurors refused to continue deliberating. “Any other jury” could come to an agreement, they said. “Judge, severe violence has already been done to most of our conscience to even get this far,” Johnson read in a note penned by the jury foreman. “We believe it is a total fluke, a 1 in 1,000 chance this group of jurors was assembled.”
Johnson declared the mistrial to a silent courtroom. When David Temple was taken into a holding room, his brother placed his head on the courtroom bench in front of him and cried.
The sentencing guidelines remain the same for Temple as they did in 2007, when he was first tried in court. He faces a wide
range of punishment — probation or five years to life in prison. For now, he will remain in jail without bond but will have a bail hearing within 10 days, defense attorney Stan Schneider said.
“Everyone’s very disappointed,” Schneider said, next to members of Temple’s family, including David and Belinda’s son, Evan. “They’re standing with me and David 100 percent, and we have a long way to go see if we can do this right the second time.”
Prosecutors with the Texas Attorney General’s Office had argued for a life sentence, emphasizing Temple had killed not just a spouse, but a wife who was weeks away from giving birth to a daughter, Erin Ashley. The unborn child did not survive.
Temple was indicted five years after the January 1999 murder and found guilty in 2007. He served prison time until 2016, when an appeals court reversed the verdict because prosecutors failed to grant Temple a fair trial.
A new defense team represented Temple, and the Harris County District Attorney’s Office requested the state Attorney General’s Office act as special prosecutors in the case.
“We wanted a verdict, we wanted finality for the family. But I would rather have a conscious, legitimate verdict than one that violated their conscience,” said prosecutor Lisa Tanner, of the Texas Attorney General’s Office. “I’m mostly still very, very happy that they found him guilty again for a second time.”
Belinda Temple, 30, was found shot to death in her master bedroom closet on Jan. 11, 1999. Her husband has always maintained he came home that afternoon with his 3-year-old son to find his wife dead amid a burglary. Defense attorneys claimed the murder was carried out by a teenage neighbor, a story which jurors rejected.
Testimony in Temple’s retrial began July 8, with family members of both Belinda and David stationing themselves on court benches almost daily until the mistrial one month later.
David Temple’s defense attorney and family members say they believe in his innocence. While arguing for a lower sentence Wednesday, Schneider mentioned Temple had already served almost 10 years in prison, a fact that was meant to be unknown to jurors throughout the trial.
Tanner said Schneider’s mention of that prison time could have influenced jurors in deliberations, but declined to reveal specifics of what jury members told attorneys after the trial. The panel left the courthouse after being dismissed and did not make themselves available to reporters.
Schneider said the group was deliberating between 10 years to life and “everywhere in between,” but wouldn’t specify whether the 10 jurors who were willing to keep discussing the sentence were in agreement at all.
A new jury panel will hear testimony and evidence all over again before making a sentencing decision. It remains to be seen whether the case will be moved to another county to find less-tainted jurors, given the media coverage of the murder and court proceedings.
Both legal parties agreed a mistrial on sentencing is rare, and Belinda Temple’s family’s spokesman said he thought the outcome was “unprecedented” in Harris County.
Schneider added he doesn’t envision an appeals process ending any time soon. The retrial was made possible when an appeals court found that state prosecutors had withheld reams of information that could have benefited Temple's defense.
Andy Kahan, the family spokesman who is also a longtime victim’s advocate in the Houston area, said Belinda’s relatives are ready to continue the legal fight to get justice for the beloved school teacher and mother.
“They’re disappointed, as you can well imagine, but they’re as tough as nails,” Kahan said. “We’re going to come out blazing whenever this is reset.”