Pierce County jurors unable to reach verdict

TACOMA – A Pierce County Superior Court jury failed to reach a verdict Wednesday in the case of a sex offender charged with killing a woman in 1988.

Judge Thomas P. Larkin declared a mistrial on a second-degree murder charge against Daniel Ralph Maples, 50, after the eight men and four women on the jury said they were hopelessly deadlocked with eight in favor of acquittal and four for conviction.

Deputy Prosecutors Lisa K. Wagner and James S. Schacht immediately notified Larkin that they would try Maples again for the death of Christine Blais, 28, and a tentative trial date was set for May 5. Larkin ordered that Maples remain in jail with bail set at $1 million.

The jury heard six weeks of testimony and deliberated for five days.

“They seemed to think there was no question she was murdered,” Wagner said. “Some of them had trouble placing Maples at the scene.”

Defense lawyer Mary K. High said outside court she would explore whether a second trial would violate the constitutional ban on double jeopardy and also would argue that if there is a second trial, the maximum charge should be second-degree murder.

Maples, a Level 3 sex offender, originally was charged with first-degree murder, but Larkin ruled during the trial that prosecutors failed to prove he planned the killing.

Testimony and evidence showed Blais, a single mother with an 8-year-old daughter, vanished on Oct. 8, 1988, after giving Maples a ride home from Ak-Wa Co., a Tideflats shipbuilding plant where they both worked. Her body was found three months later near a northeast Tacoma home where Maples had lived in the preceding years.

Blais’ daughter, Jessie Calixto, took time off work to attend every day of the trial and was disappointed by the mistrial.

“We’ve invested a lot of time of our lives,” Calixto said, “not just the last six weeks, but the last 20 years.”

Practically from the outset, police suspected Maples was responsible, but charges were brought only in 2005 on the basis of mostly circumstantial evidence and what prosecutors said were inconsistencies in statements he gave to investigators about Blais.

Prosecutors were hamstrung by the inability of medical examiners to determine the cause of death because of the state of decomposition of her remains.

Prosecutors, who argued that Maples killed Blais after sexually assaulting her, also were prevented from raising his criminal history during the trial, including a 1994 conviction for first-degree child molestation.