Police booking photo of Jamell Demons a.k.a. YNW Melly. February 13, 2019. Broward's Sheriff's Office via Getty Images
A mistrial has been declared in the YNW Melly double murder trial, NBC News reports, after a jury was unable to arrive at a unanimous verdict. The rapper born Jamell Demons was charged in the October 2018 shooting deaths of his childhood friends Anthony “YNW Sakchaser” Williams and Christopher “YNW Juvy” Thomas Jr. Melly was arrested in February 2019 and charged with two counts of first-degree murder.
Melly’s trial began on June 12. Over the next several weeks, prosecutors attempted to prove that Melly had murdered Williams and Thomas Jr. in a car and staged the scene to make it look like a drive-by shooting. The state also had access to Melly’s phone and text records, which included a message that read “I did that” sent after the shooting.
Melly’s defense attempted to discredit this message by pointing to different spellings of the word “that” in other texts, as well as the fact that Melly’s phone was shared with other individuals. A motion for a mistrial was filed and denied by Broward County Circuit Judge John Murphy.
Closing arguments for the trial concluded on Thursday. The following day, the jury indicated that it was deadlocked on a decision. Judge Murphy instructed them to return on Saturday to deliberate for a final time, and said a mistrial would be declared if a verdict was not reached. After they failed to reach a unanimous verdict once again, he followed through on his promise. The state will now have 90 days to retry the case.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated with more information as it becomes available.
