For the second time, a jury was unable to collectively decide whether Quinton Tellis was guilty of setting 19-year-old Chambers and her car on fire in a dark embankment in December 2014.
After a Mississippi judge declared a mistrial in the case of Jessica Chambers' murder, many have been left wondering what would come next for the man accused in her death.
For the second time, a jury was unable to collectively decide whether Quinton Tellis was guilty of setting 19-year-old Chambers and her car on fire in a dark embankment in December 2014.
Judge Gerald Chatham Clarence declared the mistrial when jurors were unable to reach a unanimous decision after a day and a half of deliberation. The first trial for Tellis, now 29, ended under the same circumstances.
"We put on what I believe to be the very, very best case that we could put on and they just couldn't agree," District Attorney John Champion said.
Champion added that he wasn’t sure whether he will seek to try Tellis a third time, but regardless, Tellis was not going to walk out of court a free man Monday.
Tellis is currently serving a 10-year sentence in Louisiana after pleading guilty of illegally using a credit card belonging to a woman found tortured and killed. He has also been indicted in that woman’s murder.
Ming-Chen “Mandy” Hsiao, 34, was found stabbed more than 30 times in her Monroe apartment on July 29, 2016.
Hsiao, a University of Louisiana Monroe alumna who was born in Taiwan, suffered superficial cuts and slices before her death, officials said.
It is believed these injuries were inflicted until Hsiao provided her PIN number, the warrant served to Tellis said.
"...He [Tellis] tortured and robbed Ming-Chen Hsiao of her Chase Bank debit card, from which he had a substantial financial gain," according to the warrant, obtained by the News Star. "After gaining possession of the debit card, he brutally murdered her by repeatedly stabbing her and letting her body rot and decompose until being discovered."
Tellis pleaded guilty to one count of unauthorized use of an access card May 12, 2016 immediately before a jury trial was scheduled to begin on that charge and one count possession of a controlled dangerous substance with intent to distribute.
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