Jury recesses for the weekend in Mark Becker trial

ALLISON - Jurors in Mark Becker's first-degree murder trial will resume deliberations Monday morning after spending 2 1/2 days considering a verdict.

Judge Stephen Carrol sent the jurors home Friday after answering a question about what would happen to Becker if they found him not guilty by reason of insanity.

“You have nothing to do with the consequences” of the verdict, Carroll said in a note to the jury.

Becker, 24, is on trial in Butler County District Court for shooting and killing Aplington-Parkersburg High School football coach Ed Thomas, 58, on June 24. Becker claimed insanity as his defense.

Assistant Iowa Attorney General Andy Prosser said the jury took four votes Friday and couldn't agree. Deliberations began Wednesday afternoon.

A judge will likely consider how much testimony and evidence a jury has to consider and how many hours it has deliberated before accepting a hung jury, said Mark Brown, a Cedar Rapids defense attorney not connected to the Becker case who has experience with hung juries.

The judge will give a jury instruction to jurors who are deadlocked and ask them to look over the testimony and evidence again and reconsider their opinions, Mike Lahammer, Cedar Rapids attorney, said. The judge reminds jurors it's an important case and that it's “been expensive in time, effort, money and emotional strain to both the defense and the prosecution,” according to the instruction.

He said a judge will tell jurors the case will be left open and have to be tried again if a verdict is not reached.

“I had a case where the jury was deadlocked 6-6, and the judge told them to go back and give it another shot after giving them the charging order, and they had a verdict in a few minutes,” Assistant Linn County Attorney Nick Maybanks said.

Brown said the conviction rate on a second trial is very high because prosecutors have the first trial's transcript and use it to correct errors or weaknesses in their case.

Maybanks said he's had several hung juries in the last 10 years in cases ranging from drunken driving to first-degree robbery.

“They aren't unheard of,” Maybanks said.