United States v. Williams

PATRICK E. HIGGINBOTHAM, Circuit Judge:

Returning to this Court for the third time, this case arises out of an illegal alien smuggling conspiracy that caused the deaths of nineteen undocumented aliens secreted in the trailer of a tractor-trailer driven by defendant Tyrone Mapletoft Williams from Harlingen, Texas, to Victoria, Texas. Five days after receiving the case at the close of Williams’s trial for various alien smuggling offenses in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1324, 1 the jury returned the verdict form with both an entry of “guilty” and an express statement of “hopeless[ ] deadlock! ]” on…