ATLANTA — Jurors in the Tex McIver murder trial told Channel 2 Action News it took a lot of compromise to reach a verdict.
The 12-person panel deliberated for four days before finally reaching a verdict Monday afternoon.
They found the Atlanta attorney guilty of murdering his wife, Diane, as they rode in their SUV in September 2016. They also found him guilty of trying to influence a witness, Dani Jo Carter, who was driving the SUV at the time of the shooting.
Earlier Monday it appeared that a verdict might never come when jurors told the judge they were deadlocked and couldn’t come to a unanimous decision on four of the five counts.
The judge sent them back, telling them they needed to keep deliberating and continue to try for a verdict.
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After the trial ended, Channel 2 Action News spoke with some of the jurors outside the courthouse.
"It definitely took a lot of compromise on both sides of where we were with our deliberations," juror Aubrey Gray said. "There was definitely a point where we did not think we were going to get to guilt or innocence.”
He said after the judge read them the Allen charge Monday afternoon, telling them they needed to keep deliberating and try to reach a verdict, they re-examined their positions and were able to come to a unanimous decision.
“(We were able to) specifically look at the evidence, take away any emotion that we had, and that’s how we came up with our guilty verdict on four of the five counts,” Gray said.
Gray said he was back and forth for much of deliberations.
"I was in both camps for a while, flip-flopping sides, trying to come to a rational decision," he said.
Gray said there were several "gun experts" on the jury, who helped them talk through many of the questions.
“That was one of our contingents the entire time, why was his hand, particularly his finger, on the trigger. And one of the key things for us, we had to look back at his statements to police when he said the gun just went off, and we finally decided that a gun just doesn’t go off,” Gray said. “It was not an accident. His hand was on the trigger. Guns just don’t go off.”
Another juror, Lakeisha Boyd, said the deciding factor for her was also the finger on the trigger, and holding the gun inside the car.
“We went back down to the vehicle. We were able to take the firearm to the vehicle and were able to test it out ourselves,” she said.
Boyd said, at the end of the day, they did their job.
“Justice was served,” she said.
Cox Media Group
