Will Asbury Park gang execution defendants see the light of day? Retrial to decide

FREEHOLD Two men accused in the Thanksgiving Eve 2017 execution of a rival gang member in Asbury Park will stand trial again in June, after their first trial ended with a mistrial last month and subsequent plea negotiations failed.

Efforts to stave off a second trial failed because one of the defendants, Avery Hopes, 28, of Asbury Park, turned down a plea bargain that would have called for his release from prison in about eight years, his attorney said.

Terms of any plea bargains offered by prosecutors required both defendants - Hopes and Vernon Sanders - to accept them, in order to spare the victim's family from having to sit through a retrial, Superior Court Judge Marc C. LeMieux noted at a conference in the case Wednesday.

When Hopes refused the plea bargain, it also eliminated that option for Sanders, 38, of Brick, he noted.

Earlier: Why there is no verdict yet in Asbury Park gang execution trial

Related: 'Bullying' in jury room forces mistrial in Asbury Park gang execution case

Hopes and Sanders, both alleged to be members of the Bloods street gang, are charged with the Nov. 22, 2017, murder of Denzel Morgan-Hicks, 27, a member of the rival Crips gang.

Morgan-Hicks, a former Asbury Park resident who was living in Barnegat, died in a hail of gunfire upon returning to his sport-utility vehicle after visiting friends in an apartment on Prospect Avenue in Asbury Park.

Hopes and Sanders stood trial before Superior Court Judge Jill Grace O'Malley, who declared a mistrial last month after the jury indicated it was at an impasse, and one of the jurors reported she was being bullied - something her fellow jurors denied.

The defendants continue to be held in the Monmouth County Jail without bail. Their attorneys did not make motions for their release.

LeMieux noted that under terms of the Criminal Justice Reform Act, the defendants must be retried within 120 days of the mistrial unless the case could be resolved through plea bargains.

"If there was going to be any room for conversations about working out a deal, it was today,'' LeMieux said at Wednesday's conference.

Paul Zager, who represents Hopes, told the judge he begged his client to accept a plea bargain "on the theory that he could be out, give or take, in eight years, and he would be able to hug his daughter, who would be 18 at the time.''

Hopes would not take his advice, Zager told the judge.

LeMieux advised Hopes to think carefully about his decision. The judge told Hopes he may feel good that the jury in the last trial didn't reach a verdict, but he cautioned the defendant that the panel could have been 11-to-1 in favor of convicting him.

"It's up to debate as to really what was going on in that room, but if it was 11-to-1 against you, you'r'e putting yourself in peril by doing this,'' LeMieux told him. "You're putting Mr. Sanders in even more peril because the allegation is that he is the alleged shooter here.''

LeMieux told Hopes he could potentially be out of prison at age 35 if he accepted a plea bargain and would have the rest of his life before him.

"Do you want to have one more discussion with Mr. Zager to kind of talk this through one more time, or are you truly comfortable and do you feel at ease with the fact that you are exposing yourself literally to the rest of your life in jail because, candidly, with your prior record, there's a chance that you're going away for the rest of your life,'' LeMieux said to Hopes.

Hopes responded that he did not want to have any further discussions about a plea bargain.

With that, LeMieux scheduled the retrial for both defendants for June 12.

LeMieux said he will preside over the trial. He initially was to preside over the first trial, but he reassigned it to O'Malley because he was in the middle of another trial at the time.

At the first trial, Matthew Bogner and Caitlin Sidley, assistant Monmouth County prosecutors, argued that Sanders wanted Morgan-Hicks dead because he was rumored to have killed a Blood, Edric Gordon, even though Morgan-Hicks was never charged in the 21-year-old Neptune man's 2011 shooting death in Asbury Park.

Zager and Sanders' attorney, John Reilly, argued that the state's star witnesses - primarily brothers Steven and Michael Taylor of Asbury Park - were liars.

The Taylor brothers both were charged in the murder, and both accepted plea bargains requiring them to testify against Hopes and Sanders.

The Taylor brothers testified that they hurriedly arranged for Morgan-Hicks' murder when he showed up to visit friends on Prospect Avenue on the night he was killed.

Steven Taylor said he called Sanders to tell him of Morgan-Hicks' presence in the neighborhood, and Michael Taylor said he called Hopes and told him to bring a gun.

Both brothers testified that Hopes showed up in a white, hooded sweatshirt, but they made him change into a grey sweatsuit because they said white was too bright a color to wear while committing a murder.

Michael Taylor testified he drove Hopes away from the shooting scene and was chased for blocks by a mysterious black vehicle he was eventually able to shake. He said he then went to his girlfriend's house and got a pie crust that his grandmother had wanted him to bring home that night for Thanksgiving dinner the next day.

Steven Taylor testified he left the area with another man who was wearing a court-ordered, GPS-monitoring anklet that would provide him with an alibi for the shooting.

The trial started on Feb. 9 and ended in a mistrial on March 23 after the jury had deliberated for four days.

Kathleen Hopkins, a reporter in New Jersey since 1985, covers crime, court cases, legal issues and just about every major murder trial to hit Monmouth and Ocean counties. Contact her at khopkins@app.com.

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Asbury Park NJ gang killing trial: Plea bargaining fails, retrial set