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HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — Jurors in the A.J. Armstrong capital murder retrial deliberated for 12 hours before concluding their second day on deciding his fate in the case.
The judge called an end to the day just before 7 p.m. Tuesday. The jury, which is made up of six men and six women, returns Wednesday morning for a third day of deliberations.
A.J. is on trial for the second time, accused of killing his parents as they slept in the family’s southwest Houston home in 2016. A.J. was only 16 years old at the time.
On Tuesday afternoon, jurors asked the judge to provide a full list of the 24 witnesses and the order in which they testified. They also asked to see the full testimony of three Houston police officers and the ADT alarm company representative.
Later in the day, the prosecution and defense attorneys were conferencing with headphones and mics in front of the judge, which the court employs to put it on record but without media members seeing it.
Late Monday, the jury had asked to see the ADT alarm records.
The Armstrong’s home security system has been a key piece of evidence in this case. The prosecution argues those alarm records prove the killer had to come from inside the house because there’s no record of the doors or windows opening.
“There is no evidence those doors were ever opened,” Ryan Trask told jurors during Monday’s closing arguments.
But, A.J.’s attorneys say there are 77 instances where the alarm motion detectors logged incorrect data.
“A.J. deserves to have his future decided on something more than records that are garbage,” said Chris Collings to the jury during his closing arguments.
In 2019, after 19 hours of deliberation, a jury ultimately could not decide whether A.J. was guilty or not guilty, and the judge declared a mistrial.
For this trial, the jury is sequestered. They are spending a second night away from their families. Their cell phones have been collected and the television has been removed from each hotel room, so jurors cannot do any independent research on the case.