Sage asked the jury if further deliberation might result in a verdict, and the jury foreman said, “no.” Sage then declared a mistrial.
Smith, who was already serving time in prison for his part in a 2007 shoot out at a Middletown housing complex, was charged with murder and a gun specification for the 2011 death of DeMarco Conley, who was wounded in that shoot out.
Butler County Prosecutor Michael Gmoser said he wants to retry the case “but that is not etched in stone.”
Smith’s fiancee, Keena Mayfield, and his father, Henry Gamble, expressed relief and happiness.
“God is good,” Mayfield said, adding the case should not be retried. “He is innocent; always has been.”
Conley’s mother, Starla Conley, said she wasn’t sure what to think.
“I am going to go home with my family and marinate on it,” she said.
Sage scheduled a pretrial conference with the attorneys for Friday morning.
Defense attorney Patrick Mulligan said he respects the process and declined further comment due to potential pending litigation.
Smith was convicted in 2008 of felonious assault and is serving a 21-year sentence for that crime. He faced an additional 28 years to life if convicted of the murder charge.
Conley, 26, died in Pittsburgh in December 2011 after years of surgeries to try to correct the damage from a single gunshot to the stomach. A Butler County grand jury indicted Smith, Shadeed Barnett and Teray Marshall last year for murder.
Barnett and Marshall pleaded guilty last week to the murder charge and were sentenced to 15 years to life.
Prosecutors said Smith was complicit in Conley’s slaying because he and the others planned the shoot out, and he was behind the wheel of one of the cars corralling victims while shooters opened fire.
Smith aided and abetted his friends when he drove a blue Ford Taurus to the Townhomes West apartments off Main Street on Sept. 19, 2007, following a fight at the former Grand Illusion Bar on Grand Avenue, according to the prosecution.
Pennsylvania medical examiner Dr. Abdulrezak Shakir, who performed the autopsy on Conley, said Conley died of complications from the gunshot wound he suffered in 2007.
But the defense questioned if the gunshot was actually the cause of Conley’s death, noting medical records indicate Conley underwent an intestine transplant then developed complications in 2011.
“After four or five years and a bunch of (medical) choices, I am not sure you can get to the point that felonious assault caused the death,” Mulligan told the jury. “DeMarco Conley was permanently injured. But that is felonious assault, not murder.”
Mulligan also questioned the credibility of the witnesses who were vague about their testimony five years after the fact.
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