Mistrial

The murder trial of Tavon Donya Sands ended abruptly in a mistrial yesterday after a witness testified that an investigator showed him a series of photos that included the 21- year-old Columbia man's picture - information that prosecution and defense attorneys said caught them by surprise. Howard Circuit Judge Raymond J. Kane Jr. halted the proceedings during the trial's first full day of testimony, saying a mistrial was the only remedy. The issue, the lawyers said yesterday, was one of discovery - rules requiring that the state turn over any evidence relating to guilt or innocence of a defendant to the defense.

FORT LEWIS, Wash. -- A military judge abruptly declared a mistrial yesterday in the court-martial of an Army lieutenant who refused orders to go to Iraq, handing a temporary reprieve to the elated officer and leaving military prosecutors visibly stunned and angry with the ruling. The decision by the judge, Lt. Col. John Head, turned on the contentious issue of whether factual stipulations agreed to earlier by the prosecutors and the defense team amounted to a confession of guilt by the lieutenant, 28-year-old Ehren Watada, on the Army's charges of failure to deploy.

Moments after Harford Circuit Judge Cypert O. Whitfill had declared a mistrial in a murder case Tuesday, the defendant and his former sister-in-law got into a shouting match."

Prosecutors will retry the case of a Westminster man whose first trial on charges of sexually abusing his 17-year-old stepson resulted in a mistrial.During a hearing to waive Maryland's trial-scheduling rule, Carroll Circuit Judge Luke K. Burns Jr. gave prosecutors the go-ahead to try the man on June 22. In Maryland, all Circuit Court trials must be scheduled within 180 days of an attorney's appearance in the case unless a judge rules otherwise.In February, Judge Burns had declared a mistrial after a day of often- rancorous testimony.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands - Richard May, the British judge who presides over the war crimes trial of Slobodan Milosevic, has fallen ill, adding a new setback to the two-year-old process, which has been beset by difficulties from the start. Officials at the United Nations tribunal say that the nature of the judge's illness is a private matter and decline to discuss it. But because of its seriousness, some said, officials are bracing for the possibility that the judge may not be able to return to his duties any time soon and may have to be replaced.

A mistrial was declared yesterday in the U.S. District Court trial on a federal handgun charge of Melvin "Little Melvin" Williams, one of Baltimore's most notorious drug lords.U.S. District Judge Marvin J. Garbis issued the declaration after jurors told him they were unable to reach a verdict after 6 1/2 hours of deliberation over two days.The case against Williams stemmed from a March incident in which he was accused of using a handgun to beat a man whose family owed money to the bail bond company which employed Williams as a manager.

Just minutes before the jury in Ruthann Aron's murder-for-hire trial was set to go home for the day, a witness blurted out a potentially damaging allegation: Aron hired a hit man only after poisoning her husband failed.Jurors in a Rockville courtroom looked stunned, and lawyers hurried to the judge's bench for a conference after William Mossburg, over the objection of prosecutors, made his statement, which could lead to a mistrial motion.The Montgomery County state's attorney's office had separated the murder-solicitation trial from the trial on attempted-murder charges involving the alleged poisoning of Dr. Barry Aron with a batch of chili.

The larceny and fraud trial of two former Tyco International executives crumbled yesterday in a New York City courtroom, six months after it began, when one of the jurors who had been deliberating for the past two weeks received a threatening letter that prompted the judge to declare a mistrial. The development was a setback for the prosecution of former Chief Executive Officer L. Dennis Kozlowski, whose $6,000 shower curtain and $2 million toga party had set a new standard for executive excess, but analysts and legal observers doubt that the aborted trial will have any effect on a future trial, or on any other high-profile corporate fraud cases.

The trial of a Darlington woman charged in the death of a 16-month-old boy who was given methadone ended yesterday in a mistrial on charges of involuntary manslaughter, but the woman could face five years in prison after being convicted on a lesser charge. Jurors found Elaine Marie Butler, 53, guilty of reckless endangerment and not guilty of accessory after the fact. But they deadlocked on a count of involuntary manslaughter after seven hours of deliberations that began Wednesday night, leading Harford County Circuit Judge Stephen M. Waldron to declare a mistrial.

The murder trial of Tavon Donya Sands ended abruptly in a mistrial yesterday after a witness testified that an investigator showed him a series of photos that included the 21-year-old Columbia man's picture - information that both prosecution and defense attorneys said caught them by surprise. Howard Circuit Judge Raymond J. Kane Jr. halted the proceedings during the trial's first full day of testimony, saying a mistrial was the only "remedy" for a situation lawyers likened to "trial by ambush."