A Sacramento jury deadlocked 11-1 earlier this month on whether to sentence Adel Ramos, who pleaded guilty to killing Sacramento police Officer Tara O’Sullivan in 2019, to death.
The Sacramento Bee reports that the jury deliberated for one month before telling Sacramento Superior Court Judge James Arguelles they were deadlocked, with one juror unable to agree that Ramos should be sentenced to death. According to the paper, the judge then declared a mistrial and gave Deputy District Attorney Jeffrey Hightower until December 20 to decide whether to retry Ramos with a different jury.
O’Sullivan was killed when Ramos opened fire on her and two other officers when they accompanied a woman to the home she shared with Ramos to collect her belongings. She had fled the home earlier after Ramos had made threats against her. The Sacramento Bee reports that O’Sullivan was the only one wounded in the ambush and “lay on the ground nearly an hour” before officers were able to rescue her. O’Sullivan, who had been an officer for only six months before she was killed, was 26.
This is the second time this year a Sacramento jury has deadlocked in a death penalty case. In July, a jury deadlocked 10-2 in the case of Anton Paris, who was facing a death sentence for the 2018 shooting death of Sacramento County Deputy Mark Stasyuk 2018, Courthouse News Service reported at the time. On Friday, according to Courthouse News, prosecutors announced they will retry Paris in the penalty phase, arguing again for a death sentence. They suggested they might set ” a tentative trial date of September 2025.”