Georgia defendant locked up for 10 years in pretrial detention sent back to jail following mistrial

Two defendants in Georgia have spent a combined 17 years in pretrial detention in connection with a drive-by shooting case. Now one is a free man after he was acquitted on all charges, but the other has been remanded back to jail after the jury failed to reach a verdict.

The charges stem from a fatal drive-by shooting that occurred all the way back in 2013 in Albany, Georgia, about 175 miles south of Atlanta. Investigators suspected at the time that the violence was gang-related and charged four people in connection to the crime. Two of the defendants were granted a speedy trial within months of the shooting and were subsequently acquitted.

However, two other defendants, Condell Benyard and Maurice Jimmerson, did not immediately go to trial and instead sat in a pretrial detention center — the Dougherty County Jail — to await their day in court. And waited. And waited.

This summer, Benyard and Jimmerson were finally tried in a court of law. After two weeks of testimony, the case was finally in the hands of the jury.

On Monday, Benyard was found not guilty of all 26 charges against him. He was a free man, innocent in the eyes of the law, after languishing in jail awaiting trial for seven years.

His co-defendant, Jimmerson, was not so lucky. The jury deadlocked on a verdict in his case, and after three days of unsuccessful deliberations, the judge declared a mistrial for the hung jury. Jimmerson, 32, was then taken back to the Dougherty County Jail to await his next hearing, scheduled for next week.

Mistrial declared after man waits 10 years in jail for day in courtwww.youtube.com

Jimmerson’s attorney, Andrew Fleischman, who is working pro bono, is frustrated by the turn of events. "I’m old-fashioned. I think people should be convicted of a crime before they’re punished," Fleischman said facetiously. "This is an unprecedented case. This is about a core constitutional right, the right to a speedy trial. The right to due process. And when you see people denied that right, the public needs to know about it."

Fleischman has already filed a motion to dismiss the case against his client on grounds that the lengthy pretrial detention violated Jimmerson's constitutional right to a speedy trial. He told reporters on Tuesday that he doesn't expect a ruling on that motion for months, months that Jimmerson may spend locked up behind bars.

"His constitutional rights have been violated," said Jimmerson's mother, Sonya Holmes. "No one has paid attention. They put him in there and they forgot about him."

Dougherty County District Attorney Gregory Edwards has already stated that he intends to retry the case against Jimmerson. He claimed that eyewitness testimony placing Jimmerson at the scene of the shooting "is enough beyond a reasonable doubt" to convict him.

However, Fleischman countered that the witness testimony is dubious at best. According to reports, the witness came forward in 2016, three years after the shooting, and later recanted his story, reportedly admitting that he had lied in order to get out of prison. "No cell phone location, no DNA, no fingerprints," Fleischman reminded the jury during the trial, "and only one eyewitness who recanted his testimony."

For now, Jimmerson remains in custody on $400,000 bond for several serious charges, including felony murder, aggravated assault, possessing a gun during a felony, and street gang activity. He has a hearing next week, during which Fleischman hopes to have his bond reduced so that he might be released. However, Jimmerson also remains in custody without bail in connection with a charge for allegedly destroying a jailhouse toilet.

District Attorney Edwards blamed Jimmerson's lengthy pretrial detainment largely on the COVID shutdowns — which occurred in 2020, seven years after the shooting — and courthouse flooding. "The bulk of the delay was beyond the control of anybody," Edwards told the court. "We’ve been making every effort to bring him to trial."

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!