DALLAS _ A former Balch Springs police officer will spent time in prison for killing an unarmed black teenager last April.
After about five hours of deliberations on Wednesday, the same jury who convicted Roy Oliver sentenced him to 15 years along with a $10,000 fine.
But they had trouble getting to that point. Three hours after deliberations began, the jurors asked the judge what would happen if they couldn't agree.
His answer? Keep deliberating.
Just before 9 p.m., the jury sent a second note asking who the fines go to. Judge Brandon Birmingham told them they have all the facts needed in the case and to keep deliberating.
They reached a decision at about 9:30 p.m.
Earlier in the day, prosecutor Michael Snipes asked the jurors for a sentence of no less than 60 years during his closing statement.
After announcing the guilty verdict of murder, jurors spent about a day and a half listening to testimony of support for Jordan Edwards, 15, and Oliver, 38.
Edwards' teachers from Mesquite High School spoke highly of him.
"He's not a kid who should be dead," Alli Clements said. "It's not what you had in mind for a kid like Jordan."
Jeffery Williams said, "he was a good student, serious about schoolwork, never had to tell him twice.
Edwards' former English teacher, Jenna Williams, said he always followed the rules. She called Edwards a model student.
"Jordan was one of those kids you knew would do great things, amazing things," she said.
Defense Attorney Bob Gill asked the jury to remember that Oliver is a former cop and that going into the Texas Penitentiary system is going to be an "excruciating long period of time no matter what it is."
He asked jurors to consider sentencing Oliver under murder of sudden passion _ which lowers the minimum and maximum sentences.
Gill argued that Oliver was reacting the night he fired five shots into a car filled with five black teenage boys.
Edwards, his brothers and friends, were leaving a house party in Balch Springs at about 11 p.m. on April 29, 2017. Oliver and Officer Tyler Gross had been sent to break up the party, which had attracted about 150 to 300 attendees.
As the teenagers were leaving, suspected gang members fired five shots into the air at a nearby nursing home. That group of people and the shots were not related to the party that Edwards was attending.
When officers heard the gunshots, the black Impala in which Edwards sat caught their attention _ it was in the intersection between the party and the nursing home.
Gross demanded the driver, Vidal Allen, stop, but Allen testified that he was afraid and wanted to get home.
Oliver fired into the passenger side of the car five times, claiming it was going to run over Gross.
But body cameras and testimony proved the opposite.
Attorneys for the Edwards family said body cameras were "extremely important" in the trial.
"When this story first came out, the narrative was very different," Darryl Washington said. "The police chief took the word of what the officer said."
When jurors deliberated the charges _ the hallway outside the sixth floor courtroom was silent. While they deliberated Oliver's sentence, friends and family of Edwards stood outside, cracking jokes, smiling, laughing and hugging as if the tension had been lifted.
