Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : Jury Deadlocks in 2nd Murder Trial : Courts: Prosecutors accuse a martial arts instructor Stuart Milburn of strangling co-worker Veronica Estrada. A hearing on a possible third trial is scheduled.

A second trial of a Canyon Country martial arts instructor accused of killing a female co-worker has, like the first, ended in a mistrial because of a deadlocked jury.

Jurors on Wednesday voted 7 to 5 in favor of acquitting Stuart Edward Milburn, 27, of first-degree murder in the death of Veronica Estrada, 29, also of Canyon Country.

Prosecutors alleged that Milburn strangled Estrada last December out of jealousy over her professional achievements in the martial arts field. Investigators said Estrada was killed while walking home along a dark road.

Milburn’s first trial ended in September with jurors voting 8 to 4 to convict.

While the jury in the first trial deliberated for a month, the second jury was declared deadlocked by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Charles Horan after only five days of deliberation.

A hearing on a possible third trial is scheduled for Dec. 27, but defense attorney Darryl Mounger said he hopes the judge will throw the case out.

“We are automatically set for a retrial, but now the judge is going to have to decide if (prosecutors) can ever get around the physical evidence and the weakness of their case,” Mounger said.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Foltz could not be reached for comment.

Milburn remains in custody without bail. Mounger said his client was “certainly displeased that he did not get a not-guilty verdict.”

The uncertainty caused by the deadlocked juries are making life hard for people on both sides of the case, said Deborah Luck, a Canyon Country resident and close friend of Milburn and Estrada.

“I don’t think it’s fair to Stuart because he’s been in jail for nine months,” she said. “I feel very badly for her family because I think it’d be a lot easier to live with a decisive verdict one way or the other, because that gives you some closure.

“When you have a hung jury you always have people who believe he did it and people who believe he did not do this,” she said. “No one will be satisfied because no one will really know.”

Estrada was the American Taekwondo Assn.’s top-ranked female competitor in the second-degree black-belt division and she was named instructor of the year at Taekwondo USA in Canyon Country, where she primarily taught 5- to 8-year-olds.

Her partially clothed body was found in bushes near Soledad Canyon Road on the morning of Dec. 16. An investigation by sheriff’s deputies led to the arrest of Milburn in March.

Foltz presented three witnesses who said they saw a man resembling Milburn at the murder scene about 8:15 p.m., the estimated time of the killing. Other witnesses testified that Milburn changed his story about where he was that night and that he felt he deserved the instructor of the year award.

But Mounger presented a taekwondo student who said she saw Milburn at the studio sometime after 8 p.m. The defense also focused on Estrada’s boyfriend, Eddie Hockaday, contending the couple had argued that evening and that Hockaday had motive and opportunity to kill her.

Jurors in the first trial said they dismissed Mounger’s theory that Hockaday committed the murder, but considered the prosecution’s case weak because of the uncertainty of the identifications made by eyewitnesses.

Mounger said members of the second jury declined to comment to lawyers or reporters, after Horan warned them their comments would likely be published.

Milburn faces a minimum of 25 years in state prison if retried and convicted of first-degree murder.