AUBURN – After nearly deadlocking late Wednesday, jurors agreed to resume work this morning on deciding the guilt or innocence of Brandon Knight.
Knight, 20, is charged with manslaughter. He admits killing Shawn Fitzsimmons, 24, with a single 9-mm round to the head shortly after 2 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2004.
But Knight maintains the shooting was accidental, that he believed the Llama semiautomatic pistol he picked up from a drawer in a friend’s bedroom wasn’t loaded.
Witnesses earlier told jurors that the gun had been unloaded by its owner, Aryne Brown, the woman who rented the Horton Street apartment in Lewiston where Fitzsimmons died. Brown said she had replaced a bullet-filled clip and put the weapon back in the drawer without telling her visitors, including Knight, that she had reloaded the gun.
The jury got the case at 11:30 a.m. Tuesday, broke for lunch, then got to work at about 12:30 p.m. At midafternoon Tuesday, they heard testimony from Brown and Joe Chase, a friend of both Knight and Fitzsimmons, regarding Brown’s unloading the gun.
After lunch Wednesday, Knight’s testimony was read back to jurors, and they watched a video re-enactment of the shooting that Knight took part in while being questioned by state police homicide Detective Herbert Leighton.
Shortly before 4 p.m., the jury forewoman told Justice Ellen Gorman through a court officer that jurors hadn’t budged from their positions of Tuesday.
With the approval of Knight’s defense lawyer, Justin Leary, and Assistant Attorney General Fernard LaRochelle, who’s prosecuting the case, Gorman called jurors into the Androscoggin County Superior Court trial room to give them deadlock instructions.
First, though, Gorman told the jurors that it wasn’t unusual for them to be deliberating for so long, given the nature of the case before them.
Then she told them to return to the jury room and decide among themselves if they thought there was any chance that with further discussions they could reach a verdict.
If there was, she said to let a court officer know; if there wasn’t, the forewoman was to send the judge a note informing her of the deadline.
About a half-hour later, a court officer passed the word that the jury was going home for the evening, and would return today to continue its work.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
Success. Please wait for the page to reload. If the page does not reload within 5 seconds, please refresh the page.
Enter your email and password to access comments.
Hi, to comment on stories you must . This profile is in addition to your subscription and website login.
Already have a commenting profile? .
Invalid username/password.
Please check your email to confirm and complete your registration.
Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.
Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.