El Cajon

A murder charge was ordered reinstated Monday against an El Cajon woman facing manslaughter in the Christmas Day shooting of her lover.

The 4th District Court of Appeal ruled that San Diego Superior Court Judge Ross Tharp erred when he ordered a dismissed jury back into deliberations after they earlier said they were hung 11-1.

The case involved Lou Isabelle Jeffreys, 56, who told a jury June 20 that she shot Nick Trevino, 43, in the abdomen in self-defense after he lunged at her in their Wells Avenue apartment in El Cajon.

Trevino, a Navy chief petty officer, died after he was transferred to UCSD Medical Center in Hillcrest.

The jury told Tharp on June 27 they were deadlocked 11-1 and the judge dismissed them, declaring a mistrial. After they talked with newspaper reporters, the prosecutor and the defense attorney, Tharp brought them back into deliberations 12 minutes later.

Gary Edwards, Jeffreys’ attorney, told Tharp the jury had eliminated first- and second-degree murder in their deliberations, but they didn’t know they could acquit Jeffreys of murder when they still could not reach a verdict on manslaughter.

Over the objections of the prosecutor, Tharp sent the jurors a note asking them if they could reach a unanimous verdict on first- or second-degree murder. Minutes later they sent back a note saying they had a verdict.

“The trial court here had no authority to reconvene the jury once it had been discharged and the court had lost control over its deliberations,” wrote Justice Robert Staniforth, with two other justices concurring.

“This principle has been established since 1892 . . . The evidence that the jurors did agree on (murder) is untrustworthy because of that loss of control . . . it was not permissible to recall the jurors as was done here, and the acquittal verdicts are nullities,” the opinion stated.

Jeffreys, who formerly worked as a security guard and a detective in the Navy, faces retrial beginning Sept. 4. She remains free on $25,000 bail.