Judge declares mistrial in murder case involving shooting death of 9-year-old girl

By Dave Toplikar

Monday, May 7, 2012 | 5:20 p.m.

A Clark County district judge declared a mistrial Monday afternoon in the murder case of two men accused in the 2009 fatal shooting of a 9-year-old girl in North Las Vegas, ruling that the jury was “hopelessly deadlocked” after four days of deliberations.

The trial for Kenneth Reid Jr., 23, and Larry Marcus, 30, had been going on since mid-April. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

Judge James Bixler set a status check hearing on May 17, when he will come up with a date for a new trial for Reid and Marcus, who are each charged with murder with the use of a dangerous weapon and conspiracy to commit murder with a deadly weapon in Savannah Bullins’ death.

The defendants are each in custody on $720,000 bail.

Savannah was killed June 12, 2009, in a hail of bullets fired at her family’s Las Vegas apartment near Cheyenne Avenue and Interstate 15.

Prosecutors told the jury that Reid and Marcus were the “shot-callers” of a gang that controlled the neighborhood, the 004 Hoodsmen Bloods.

Prosecutors said Reid and Larry were targeting the girl’s father, Willie Bullins, who told police he was a former Crips gang member and had sold marijuana out of his home.

Defense attorneys argued that prosecutors had no solid evidence against either of the men. The defense attorneys have said the case against the defendants relies on innuendo and gossip and trying to create a distraction with the theory that the shooting was motivated by a battle between rival gangs.

Steve Hellerstein, foreman of the five-man, seven-woman jury, told the judge that the jurors were split 10-2 — with most of the jury favoring a guilty verdict for both men. But they were unable to reach a unanimous decision, he said.

“The court finds that this jury is hopelessly deadlocked and the court is making a finding on the record that there is a manifest necessity to declare a mistrial or the ends of justice would otherwise be defeated,” Bixler said.

After the judge discharged the jury, Hellerstein gave attorneys more details. He said that after deliberating most of the day Monday, the jury decided it was no closer to reaching a unanimous decision than it was on Friday, when jurors were getting into “heated” discussions about the evidence and getting angry with each other.

He said the jurors were also more evenly split on the other felony counts, generally voting 8 to 4 for guilty. The other counts related to the two men allegedly endangering the lives of Bullins, his wife and five children, who were all in the apartment.

Reid and Larry have been charged with seven counts of attempted murder with a deadly weapon, five counts of assault with a deadly weapon and one count of discharging a firearm into a structure. Each charge carries a gang enhancement that could extend any sentence, if there is a conviction.

After the jury was discharged, some of them told Chief Deputy District Attorney Marc Di Giacomo to “get digging and find some better witnesses.”

"We needed less hearsay and more facts," one of the women on the jury said.

Outside the courtroom, Di Giacomo said they would try again to convince another group of jurors that Reid and Larry were guilty.

“It sounds like we convinced 10 jurors of the conspiracy to commit murder,” he said. “The next time, we’ll take a shot at convincing 12.”

Outside the courtroom, Hellerstein elaborated further about the jury’s trouble with the evidence. He said jurors couldn’t all agree on evidence “that put those guys at the crime scene. It just was not a concrete deal ... We just couldn’t pull the trigger, so to speak.”

Hellerstein said one of the problems was that prosecutors relied too heavily on statements of witnesses.

“It was too much hearsay. And the witnesses — there were a lot of witnesses that had a lot of different stories,” Hellerstein said. “It was hard to believe which witness was credible and which one was not credible. It was tough. We read the evidence here and there. And nothing jived from one day to the next, including the (testimony from the) preliminary hearing and the grand jury. There was a lot of sketchy evidence.”

After the jury left, Bullins, who had identified Reid and Larry from police photos as the two men he had seen shooting into his home, declined talking about the outcome of the trial.

Meanwhile, Reid’s mother, Roxanne Lewis, sat outside the courtroom, waiting for the defense attorneys to come out to talk to her.

“I just wish it was over ... over completely, ” Lewis said.