Unauthorized photos prompt mistrial

A mistrial was declared Friday in the second-degree murder trial of Rick A. Kelly after jurors viewed photographs they were not supposed to see.

Spokane County Superior Court Judge Harold Clarke III set a new trial for Aug. 28.

A court spokeswoman said that in the course of the jury’s deliberations, jurors asked to review some evidence and were accidentally given the photographs.

The case centers on a fight that broke out at a party in the early hours of Dec. 5, 2004, that left 17-year-old Justin Snyder dead with two stab wounds to the heart. Snyder’s friend, Jade P. Britton, received five stab wounds but recovered.

“The bottom line of this case is that the defendant brought a knife to a fistfight,” deputy prosecutor Teresa Border told the jury Thursday.

Kelly, 23, took the witness stand and testified that he wasn’t feeling well on Dec. 4, 2004, but agreed to go out that night with his friend, Jeffrey Granados. They eventually ended up staying out after midnight. At about 3:30 a.m., they went to a party at 3711 W. Rockwell where several youths were drinking.

Granados, who is black, told Detective Kip Hollenbeck that he and Kelly stayed a short time before leaving. Granados said that as they left, he heard Justin Snyder call him a racial epithet, and Granados agreed to fight, but before he could Britton blind-sided him with a punch to the face that knocked him unconscious.

Snyder then turned on Kelly and punched him in the face, witnesses and court records state. Kelly testified that Snyder held him with one hand and punched him several times.

“I could not get him away from me,” Kelly said. “In my mind, I was thinking, ‘I have to do something. I have to do something.’ “

Kelly said he saw Britton knock Granados unconscious, and then Snyder attacked Kelly while being surrounded by several young males he didn’t know.

“Nobody was trying to stop it,” he said. “I felt they were all going to attack me,”

During the struggle with Snyder, Kelly remembered that he had the pocket knife he used at his restaurant job to open boxes. He somehow opened the knife with one hand and started swinging it at Snyder’s arms “so I could get away.”

He claims that he didn’t feel the knife connect, but he remembers Snyder leaving the fight. Medical Examiner Sally Aiken later determined that Snyder had been stabbed seven times, twice to the heart.

As soon as Snyder left the fight, witnesses said Britton started fighting Kelly.

“Jade put me in a chokehold. I know I was being kicked by somebody else,” Kelly said. “I remember hitting (Jade) three times in the back. But I didn’t think the knife was open.”

Two witnesses later told police that they pulled Britton off Kelly and, despite his being stabbed five times, they had to force Britton into the house because he apparently wanted to continue fighting, according to court records.

Kelly said that once they separated Britton from him, he ran across the street and tried to figure out what happened to Granados. Kelly then jogged to his father’s house on Kiernan Avenue, where his father convinced him to call 911.

Police arrived and found the bloody knife. It had been placed inside a newspaper and his father kicked the paper, revealing the knife.

In his interviews with Hollenbeck, Kelly lied and said he took the knife from one of his attackers. He testified on Wednesday and Thursday that he told that lie because he feared he would be charged with murder.

Defense attorney Chris Bugbee asked Kelly why he didn’t announce to Snyder and Britton that he had a knife in his pocket.

“Because I felt my life was in too great a danger,” Kelly said. “That didn’t seem reasonable to me. I was thinking, ‘How was I going to save myself.’ “

Border argued that Kelly never gave the fight a chance. She said he immediately went for the knife and started stabbing at life-threatening areas like the neck, chest and back. “The knife is not a necessary response to a fist,” she said.

In his closing arguments, Bugbee agreed with Border that she had presented enough evidence to show that a second-degree murder and a first-degree assault had taken place.

However, he said the homicide was justified because Kelly had just watched Granados become a victim of felony assault, and Kelly had every reason to believe that he was about to become a victim of great bodily injury.

“Where’s the fairness in any of this? Mr. Snyder and Mr. Britton calculated every move they made so they had the advantage,” Bugbee said. “But they didn’t factor in that one of the men they were attacking was armed.”

Bugbee said the testimony was clear that Kelly believed he faced at least three attackers that night, and state law does not require that someone retreat from an expected assault.

“This was a melee. This was a disaster,” Bugbee said. “What would have happened to him if he didn’t use the knife? The evidence is awfully clear. Mr. Kelly would not have been able to stop Mr. Britton. And if he hadn’t had that knife, he would’ve had Mr. Snyder on him as well.”