After a second mistrial in the Jessica Chambers murder case, many of you are asking, what happens next? Local 24’s Tish Clark talked to District Attorney John Champion.
Quinton Tellis’ second trial for the murder of 19-year-old Chambers ended Monday in a hung jury. Now, Tellis is set to go back to Monroe, Louisiana, sometime this week. He’ll face murder charges down there for killing a college exchange student.
Investigators say the student was tortured before she was stabbed nearly 30 times in July 2015. Tellis was indicted for that murder a year after the student’s body was found. Phone and GPS records place Tellis near the student’s apartment around the time she was killed.
Tellis denies killing the student. A couple of months before he was indicted for her murder, Tellis pleaded guilty of using the student’s debit card to withdraw a thousand dollars. He received a 10-year sentence as a habitual offender. Tellis was then extradited to Mississippi to face murder charges in the Jessica Chambers case.
As for the Chambers murder, District Attorney John Champion says he might take Tellis to trial a third time, but he wants to let emotions simmer down in Panola County and talk to the Chambers family before making any decisions.
“We will place a detainer on him. And you know we’ll see what happens and talk with the family and whether we give it a third go or not,” said Champion. “I’m absolutely not prepared to say that now or in the next couple weeks. I wanna see what happens in Louisiana and then have a talk with the family at some point about which way we go, um, on the case.”
Champion says if Tellis is convicted of murder in Louisiana, that conviction would be irrelevant in a third trial in the Chambers case.
“There’s a rule of evidence in Mississippi called 404B that basically says you can’t use proof of other crimes to prove that he did this one,” said Champion. “I certainly understand the reason behind the rule. We want somebody to be convicted on the proof that I have and not proof that he’s done a lot of different things in the past. Unless I can prove relevance to my case. And it wouldn’t be fair to a defendant to do that.”
Tellis also faces a felony drug charge in Louisiana. As a habitual offender, he could get a life sentence if the drug charge is brought up in the future.
