Jury returns ‘undecided’ verdict

By Ed Runyan

For now, the defendant remains in the Mahoning County Jail.

YOUNGSTOWN — After a trial lasting more than a week and jury deliberations of eight hours, participants in the felonious assault trial of Duniek Christian expected jurors to end it with either a guilty or innocent verdict.

Instead, they got what Judge James C. Evans of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court called an unprecedented result: innocent on felonious assault but “undecided” on seven similar complicity to felonious assault charges.

The problem, Judge Evans said, is that the jurors should have informed him before returning a verdict that they had not decided on the complicity charges so that he could have sent them back to either continue to deliberate or declare a hung jury.

As it is, the result leaves it unclear whether Christian should be released from prison or kept there for a future trial, Judge Evans said late Wednesday.

For now, he stays in the Mahoning County Jail.

Judge Evans plans to have a hearing, possibly Friday, to decide the next step, he said.

Christian, 23, of North Garland Avenue, was the driver of a stolen Cadillac that collided with an unmarked Youngstown police cruiser and then fled through the city’s East Side on July 1, 2005, with three passengers firing at seven police officers with assault rifles.

The question for jurors was how much fault Christian shared with the gunmen for the gunfire and whether he had assaulted the officers in the unmarked cruiser during the collision.

The jury decided he was innocent of assaulting the officers during the collision. And the jury decided he was innocent of shooting at them.

But they wrote “undecided” on their jury forms in an area that asks whether the defendant is guilty of the lesser offense of complicity to felonious assault.

Either set of crimes could land Christian in prison for many years.

Defense lawyer Thomas Zena argued that the police initiated the collision, not Christian, and that Christian had stopped the car when first confronted by police and drove off only because one of the gunmen ordered him to.

But Mark Hockensmith, an assistant county prosecutor, told jurors to use their common sense in determining that Christian was more than an unwilling participant in the chase and shootout.

For one thing, Christian was arrested the next day with the same man who had allegedly threatened to shoot him if he didn’t drive, Hockensmith said.

runyan@vindy.com