Because a judge jumped too quickly to declaring a mistrial, a man charged with a murder in Macon four years ago—when he was 17—will soon walk free and cannot be tried again, the Georgia Supreme Court has ruled.

“The court said that the deliberations were contentious and that it declared the mistrial 'in the interest of juror safety.' Having reviewed the record, we conclude that the trial court declared the mistrial without sufficient factual support and without considering less drastic alternatives to terminating the trial. Because there was no manifest necessity for a mistrial, we reverse,” Justice David Nahmias wrote in a unanimous opinion released Monday.

“In its determination that a mistrial was necessary to ensure the jurors' safety, the court relied on the deputy sheriff's reports of what he perceived to be heated and volatile deliberations. Contentious jury deliberations, without more, do not establish the manifest necessity required for a constitutionally permissible mistrial,” Nahmias said. Then he added, quoting a 2013 opinion in Cernas v. Hedgpeth, “If heated debate alone were sufficient grounds for mistrial in all criminal cases, the criminal justice system could not function.”

When Macon Judicial Circuit Superior Court Judge Howard Simms declared the mistrial, the jury had only deliberated a total of about three hours following a four-day trial, according to the decision. The prosecutor spoke in favor of a mistrial over an Allen charge to instruct the jury to keep trying. The defense objected to the mistrial, saying that three hours of deliberation was not unreasonable, Nahmias said.

Nahmias agreed with defense attorneys that trying Jedarrius Meadows again would amount to double jeopardy. “Particularly given the delay between the mistrial and this decision, he should be promptly ordered released from confinement upon the return of the remittitur from this Court,” Nahmias said.

That delay of over a year was not explained, the court said.

Defense attorneys Mark Barnes and James Davis of Macon visited their client in jail Monday morning to tell him they had won. He had already heard the news from his mother, who works at the post office. “He was very happy,” Barnes said.

“We told him we were extremely confident in our case and were prepared to take this all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary,” Barnes said.

In the fifth footnote of the opinion, Nahmias gave a hint at his appraisal of Meadows' case.
“Indeed, having reviewed the record, the evidence of Appellant's guilt presented at trial was not compelling, although it may have been legally sufficient to support guilty verdicts if viewed in the light most favorable to the State. So this is a case where the defendant's interest in having his first trial proceed to a verdict is not merely theoretical,” Nahmias said.

Meadows testified at trial that not only was he innocent of murder, but also he was not even there in the baseball park when Damion Clayton was shot and killed, Barnes said. His only connection was that he had been at a carnival a couple of hours earlier with one of his co-defendants. Their cases were severed from his after they both pleaded guilty to lesser charges—aggravated assault and armed robbery—and identified Meadows as the shooter, according to the opinion and the defense attorney. They were given 20- to 30-year prison sentences but would be eligible for parole, according to Barnes. He said Meadows was offered life with the possibility of parole, if he would plead guilty to murder, but refused.

“They made a deal with the devil,” Barnes said, speaking of the prosecutors' agreement with the co-defendants—one of whom changed his mind at the trial.

“We stand by the evidence presented at trial that proves Mr. Meadows' guilt,” Macon Judicial Circuit District Attorney K. David Cooke said by email Wednesday. “While we respect the Georgia Supreme Court's opinion, we strongly disagree with it.”

The case is Meadows v. State, No. S18A0314.