By admin 
In a stunning turn, a Sacramento Superior Court judge declared a mistrial Tuesday in the K Street mass shooting murder trial of surviving suspects Dandrae Martin and Mtula Payton after jurors failed to reach verdicts on the remaining charges.
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The decision came days after prosecutors dropped first-degree murder charges against Martin and Payton in the deaths of Yamile Martinez, 21; Johntaya Alexander, 21; and Melinda Davis, 57, who were killed shortly after 2 a.m. April 3, 2022, in Sacramento’s deadliest-ever mass shooting.
Jurors last week were instructed by Judge Michael Bowman to return Tuesday to deliberate the lesser included offenses of second-degree murder and voluntary manslaughter. They returned to court Tuesday and reported they remained deadlocked. Bowman then declared a mistrial.
The case hinged on whether Sacramento’s deadliest-ever mass shooting was triggered by a planned confrontation between rival gang members or whether Martin and Payton fired their weapons in self-defense after the shooting began.
In all, six people were killed — Sergio Harris, 38; Joshua Hoye-Lucchessi, 32; and Davazia Turner, 29, the three men alleged to have participated in the gunfight, and the three women who were caught in the crossfire. Thirteen other people were wounded. Martin also faced weapons-related counts.
Over weeks of testimony before Bowman, the seven-woman, five-man jury considered competing accounts of what happened and reviewed painstaking frame-by-frame surveillance video showing the hours and minutes leading up to the chaos at 10th and K streets. Jurors also heard testimony from investigators and gang experts about the rivalries, alliances and subgroups that make up Sacramento’s street gang landscape.
And, they heard from Martin and Payton themselves. Both took the witness stand in days of testimony as defense attorneys Reid Kingsbury and Linda Parisi argued that Sergio Harris fired the first shots that killed Payton friend Turner and set the massacre in motion.
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“There is no evidence anyone agreed to do this,” Parisi said. “Without an agreement, all you have is Sergio Harris acting independently and people reacting to it. … There’s gunfire in all directions and (shell) casings everywhere. This is not a standoff.”
“Mr. Martin did not create the chaos, he became part of it because of what Mr. Harris was doing,” Parisi said.
But Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office prosecutors repeatedly rejected that argument during closing statements.
“They were firing weapons they weren’t allowed to possess; weapons they carried for protection. Protection from who? Gang rivals and gang conflict,” Sacramento County Deputy District Attorney Brad Ng told jurors in June before the panel began its deliberations.
“They’re not motivated by fear; they’re motivated by animus,” Ng told jurors of Martin and Payton. “They escalated the terror on K Street and now, they’re looking for an excuse. They escalated at every opportunity. These are gang members who were arming themselves. These two men are guilty of murder.”
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This is a developing story; check back with sacbee.com for updates.