NOGALES, Arizona — After about 16 hours of deliberation over three days, jurors in the trial of Nogales rancher George Alan Kelly announced they could not reach a unanimous verdict on Monday afternoon, prompting a mistrial.
“We do not believe resuming deliberations will change juror opinions,” the jury’s foreman wrote to Judge Thomas Fink, who had repeatedly suggested jurors continue trying to reach a decision.
Fink ruled the case a mistrial and set a status hearing for next Monday, to give the state time to decide whether it wants to retry the case.
Minutes after the court adjourned, Kelly — who had been smiling and chatting with supporters in the courtroom earlier in the day — said he’s “stubborn” and won’t give up if a new trial date is set.
“We got no choice. We have to do it,” he said. “If you’re in a sand trap, you gotta keep hacking until you get out.”
Prosecuting attorney Kim Hunley, chief deputy Santa Cruz county attorney, declined to comment on the mistrial.
On the deadlocked jury, defense attorney Brenna Larkin said, “It’s the second-best answer,” with an acquittal being best.
Defense co-counsel Kathy Lowthorp said Kelly has asked for her and Larkin to represent him again, if a new trial is set.
Kelly, 75, is accused of using his AK-47 to shoot at a group of migrants crossing his Kino Springs property on Jan. 30, 2023, killing an unarmed Mexican citizen, 48-year-old Gabriel Cuen Buitimea of Nogales, Mexico. He pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder.
The closely watched trial began on March 22 and lasted nearly four weeks. Jurors heard testimony from 32 witnesses, before they began deliberations on the afternoon of April 18.
The jurors’ demeanor on Monday suggested deliberations had been tense.
After jurors said for the second time they were at an impasse, Fink noted the jurors’ “obvious frustration.”
Defense attorney Larkin said jurors seemed “exhausted,” before she requested that Fink, for a second time, ask them to reconsider giving up on reaching a unanimous verdict, which he did.
Prosecuting attorney Hunley responded that she believed telling jurors again to try to reach a verdict would be “coercive.” But the additional time ultimately did not elicit a verdict.
Jurors first indicated on Friday that they were at an impasse, but Fink asked them to keep trying.
Prosecutors say on the day he was killed, Cuen Buitimea was headed back to the U.S.-Mexico border with a friend, Honduran national Daniel Ramirez. Ramirez testified that he and Cuen Buitimea were in Arizona searching for roofing work that day, before encountering Border Patrol agents and running back toward the border, crossing through Kelly’s property.
Cuen Buitimea’s body was found 115 yards from Kelly’s home. The bullet that killed him was never recovered, but law enforcement found nine spent bullet casings from Kelly’s AK-47 on his patio.
Kelly is also facing one count of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon against Ramirez.
Kelly’s defense team has argued Ramirez is an unreliable witness and suggested he wasn’t even at the scene of the shooting. Defense attorneys say Kelly feared for his and his wife Wanda’s safety that day, and that he fired warning shots above the heads of a group of armed migrants he saw close to his property. They suggested Cuen Buitimea could have been robbed and killed by someone else.
Prosecutors pointed to Kelly’s conflicting comments to law enforcement, at one point telling a Border Patrol agent that the migrants he saw on his property were too far away to be able to tell if they were armed. Later he told a detective that an armed migrant pointed a weapon at him.
Prosecutor gives closing argument in trial of an Arizona rancher charged with killing migrant
