CINCINNATI — When jurors in the trial of a Cincinnati police officer's murder trial took their first "straw poll" during deliberations, they unanimously agreed that Ray Tensing should be found guilty of murder.
That's according to Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters, who shared this new detail to radio host Bill Cunningham on 700 WLW Thursday.
"Where they were initially and where they ended up was remarkably different," Deters said. "I talked to jurors and I learned a lot. It's been helpful. It's been very helpful."
After 25 hours of deliberation last week, four jurors were ready to convict Tensing of murder, four were ready to convict him of voluntary manslaughter and four were ready to find him not guilty, Deters' office said Wednesday.
How jurors went from unanimously agreeing on a murder conviction in their straw poll to being unable to reach a verdict on any charge is unclear, Deters said. A straw poll is an unofficial vote taken to obtain an indication of the general trend of opinion on a particular issue.
Deters is in the process of deciding whether or not to retry Tensing for murder and/or voluntary manslaughter for the July 2015 death of Sam DuBose on the campus of the University of Cincinnati.
Deters needs to decide before Nov. 28 whether or not he will retry Tensing. He also has the option to bring different charges against Tensing, but he told Cunningham he wouldn't do that.
"So you're definitely not changing charges?" Cunningham asked.
"No," Deters replied. "Because it doesn't match the facts.
"I don't know if you're familiar with this, but we have video of the whole thing. He said he deliberately shot (DuBose) in the head. That's not negligent, that's murder."
