Judge Denies Mistrial in Uvalde School Shooting Trial
- Defense claims teacher's testimony contradicts information they received, arguing it's a 'trial by ambush'.
- Judge denies mistrial but allows defense to cross-examine teacher to 'unring the bell' before testimony is struck.
- Jury consultant says defense wants to challenge emotional testimony that likely impacted jurors.
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A jury trial for the Uvalde school shooting took an unexpected delay as lawyers from both sides argued the discrepancies in a teacher’s testimony that took place on January 6th.
The defendant on trial is a former Uvalde police officer who is being charged with failing to protect the students and teachers who died on that tragic day during the attack.
The special hearing lasted less than an hour. The trial judge quickly denied the defense’s motion for a mistrial. The judge was also ready to strike the teacher’s testimony from the record, but the defense asked the judge to let them continue with the cross-examination of that teacher.
Adrian Gonzales was one of the first police officers at the shooting that took place at Robb Elementary School.Prosecutors said he failed to engage the shooter as he remained in the parking lot. 19 students and 2 teachers were killed once the shooter entered the school.On day one of testimony, former third-grade teacher Stephany Hail testified that she saw the shooter in the parking lot that day. She says on the way to the classroom, she saw a person in all black with a long weapon.
The defense raised questions about this part of the testimony as to what Stephany actually saw. The defense says it contradicts the information they received from the state.The defense says, “If she did report these things to the prosecution, we were entitled to that to prepare for this. This is a trial by ambush.”
Leading into Wednesday’s hearing outside the presence of the jury, the judge denies the defense motion for a mistrial. Judge Sid Harle says, “For the record, there was a motion for mistrial, and on that motion for mistrial I’m going to find it’s denied because I think the remedies available are sufficient to protect the due process rights of the defendant.”
The judge is set to strike the witness’s testimony altogether, but the defense wants to continue the cross-examination on the witness stand on Thursday.Defense says, “We wanna unring the bell first before there is an instruction to exclude it and have the exclude it in its entirety, which is fine, but we would like to be able to unring that bell.”
Jury consultant Allison Richardson, who listened in on the hearing, says it’s an unexpected twist and turn. She explains why the defense didn’t want the judge to strike Stephanie’s testimony.
She says “they want the opportunity to rectify that testimony to the jury an the be able to ask that the testimony be stricten i think what they said about unringing the bell is very important we use that term alot, the teachers testimony was very emotional im sure it made a great impact on the jurrers and it will be hard for them to forget so the defense team will try to come in and try to contrivert her testimony so that the jury understands that what shes saying is not in alignment with what she has said before.”
Questions about the teacher’s testimony are important to the defense because they are trying to convince the jury that Adrian Gonzales was not negligent in his response as a police officer if he missed a clear opportunity to take down the shooter.
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