Jury can't reach verdict in Lewiston strangling case

After more than two weeks of testimony, 12 Kootenai County jurors could not reach a verdict Tuesday in the murder trial of a former Nez Perce County deputy sheriff.

Jurors deliberated for six hours before District Judge Gregory FitzMaurice threw in the towel, telling the panel to come back this morning to continue processing the evidence they were presented with over the past two weeks in the murder trial of Joseph Thomas Jr.

Thomas Jr. had originally been found guilty in a Lewiston courtroom in 2011 of first-degree murder for the strangulation death of his ex-wife, Beth Irby-Thomas. He was sentenced to a minimum 25 years in prison but the Idaho Supreme Court ruled relevant evidence that could have proven his innocence had been wrongfully omitted in the first trial, and a retrial was ordered.

The trial was moved to Coeur d’Alene after a 2nd District judge found the case was still fresh in the minds of Nez Perce County residents six years after the original verdict, and that seating an impartial jury in Lewiston was unlikely.

Prosecutors Casey Hemmer of the attorney general’s office and Nez Perce County prosecutor Justin Coleman, as well as Coeur d’Alene defense attorney Anne Taylor gave the jury much to digest in the trial that has lasted more than two weeks.

Irby-Thomas was found dead in her home in May 2011 with a belt around her neck after spending an evening with Thomas Jr., at her Lewiston home.

Thomas Jr. maintained his innocence. He said his wife liked being choked during sex, an activity called erotic asphyxiation, and that she had accidentally strangled herself with his belt while masturbating.

But police said Thomas Jr. had confessed to a friend, also a law enforcement agent, that he strangled Irby-Thomas to death because he “couldn’t take this shit anymore.”

Taylor told the jury that Thomas Jr. and his ex-wife had a good relationship and that on the night of her death Irby-Thomas had invited the defendant to her house to play with the couple’s children and help put them to bed. The couple had drinks, and they had sex before Thomas Jr., who did not want to drink and drive, went to sleep in his Dodge Durango parked outside the house. She said Irby-Thomas then masturbated using Thomas Jr.’s belt and the unthinkable happened. She accidentally choked herself to death.

The jury will convene again this morning at the Juvenile Justice Center, the old federal courthouse in downtown Coeur d’Alene, in an effort to reach a verdict.