COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Opening statements were set to begin Thursday in the retrial of a former Ohio sheriff’s deputy charged with murder and reckless homicide in the 2020 killing of Black man who was shot multiple times in the back while entering his grandmother’s house.
The shooting of Casey Goodson Jr. by former Franklin County Deputy Jason Meade, who is white, led to protests in Columbus and lingering questions, in part because the sheriff’s office didn’t equip its deputies with body cameras or dash cameras to record the killing.
The latest trial comes more than two years after a jury couldn’t agree on a verdict in an original trial in which Meade faced the same charges. The judge in that case declared a mistrial in 2024.
Meade testified in that trial that Goodson waved a gun at him as the two drove past each other and that he pursued Goodson because he feared for his life and the lives of others. He said he eventually fired as Goodson entered his grandmother’s home because the 23-year-old man turned toward him with a gun. Goodson was shot six times, including five times in the back.
The Dec. 4, 2020, shooting happened as Meade was finishing an unsuccessful search for a fugitive as part of his work for a U.S. Marshals Service task force. Goodson was not the subject of the fugitive search, and the Marshals have said Meade wasn’t performing a mission for them at the time of the shooting.
Goodson’s family and prosecutors have said Goodson was holding a sandwich bag in one hand and his keys in the other, having unlocked the front door, when he was fatally shot. They did not dispute that Goodson may have been carrying a gun, which he had a license to carry, but prosecutors have noted that Meade has been the only person to testify that Goodson was holding a gun.
Goodson’s weapon was found on his grandmother’s kitchen floor with the safety mechanism engaged.
Jurors in the previous trial deadlocked after one was dismissed during testimony and replaced by an alternate and three others were dismissed and replaced during deliberations, forcing the panel to restart deliberations multiple times. Court officials did not say why the jurors were removed.
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