MONROE, La. — Fourth Judicial District Judge Larry Jefferson said nothing from the bench Thursday about why he acquitted Quinton Tellis of murder in the brutal 2015 torture and stabbing death of Ming Chen “Mandy” Hsiao.
He filed his reasons in writing instead, three pages that discuss four witnesses out of a trial that ran intermittently for 10 weeks, from March 17 to May 21.
Jefferson directed that copies of a document titled “Reasons for Verdict” be distributed to the parties. He did not read it aloud. It was filed with the Ouachita Parish clerk’s office the same day.
Under Louisiana law the finding is final. The state cannot appeal an acquittal, and no court will review the reasoning behind it. These three pages are the only account of the verdict that will ever exist.
After the verdict, when defense attorney Bob Noel raised a question with the court, Jefferson said he did not want anyone criticizing his court. Noel, who was granted the bench trial for his client, replied that he certainly was not going to do that.
What Jefferson found
Jefferson’s ruling rests on four witnesses, all called by the state: Dr. Frank Peretti, the pathologist; Michelle Jackson, the DNA analyst; Katelyn Hearn, the upstairs neighbor who found Hsiao’s body; and Eric Hill, who testified Tellis confessed to him.
He found the evidence established homicide but never established when Hsiao died. Peretti could not fix a date of death because of the condition of her body, discovered Aug. 8, 2015, roughly 10 days after prosecutors say she was killed. The July 29 date, Jefferson wrote, rested on circumstantial evidence alone.
He found the physical evidence pointed away from Tellis. Peretti testified Hsiao suffered 30 stab wounds, three fatal and the remainder superficial defensive wounds, that there was a great deal of blood at the scene, that the assailant had to have been in close proximity to her, and that blood spatter had to have been on him. Jefferson noted that numerous search warrants were issued for Tellis’s residence and vehicles he might have occupied and that none produced anything showing Hsiao’s blood. No weapon was ever recovered.
On DNA, Jackson testified the North Louisiana Criminalistics Laboratory excluded Tellis as a contributor, meaning none of his DNA was found at the scene.
On Hearn, Jefferson credited her account but found it did not reach far enough. She identified Tellis at the complex July 27, 2015, associated with a black vehicle that came three times that day. She heard an argument from inside Hsiao’s apartment but did not see the speaker, believing it was his voice from the earlier encounter. She did not see him at the complex after July 27. On July 29 she heard the box spring in Hsiao’s bed fall. She never heard screaming, struggling or sounds of distress.
On Hill, the reasoning is unsparing and largely unanswerable. He first told police Curtis Lemons committed the murder, claiming Tellis forced that accusation on him through a three-way jail call. No record substantiated any such call, and Hill wavered on whether it came from Tellis at all. He later told law enforcement Tellis confessed, a statement that followed police confronting him and telling him he faced accessory charges. He then signed an affidavit saying law enforcement coerced that account. He then said Tellis forced him to sign the affidavit. He was serving a robbery sentence with a prior burglary conviction when he testified. Jefferson wrote that Hill’s demeanor did not inspire confidence.
The ruling closes on the one thing the state proved outright.
“Although it was established that the defendant used the victim’s credit card, mere usage of the card does not ipso facto prove guilt when juxtaposed with the foregoing deficiencies in this case,” Jefferson wrote. “The evidentiary threshold in a criminal case is proof beyond a reasonable doubt not a by a preponderance of the evidence.”
What the reasons do not address
Assistant District Attorney Holly Chambers Jones did not try the case against Tellis hinging on the testimony of Eric Hill, though it was compelling. She tried it on the card, the PIN and the phones.
Detective Andy Stadius, the state’s cell phone forensics expert, testified about tower data placing Tellis’s device in the relevant area and about a sequence of calls to Chase Bank customer service. Jones argued the sequence was specific: a call to the Chase number that failed from Hsiao’s phone and completed from Tellis’s within the same minute. On July 29, a 1 was dialed ahead of the 800 number on both phones. Hsiao had not dialed a leading 1 on a prior call to the same number in May, or ever before an area code in several months of records.
Jones argued that the sudden use of the 1 was consistent with someone reading the number off the back of a card he was holding.
Jones also pointed to 7223, Hsiao’s PIN, manually entered on Tellis’s phone as if to save it in the same window of time in which the Chase number was dialed from both devices.
Michael Fegley, the defense geolocation expert, testified as well, and his evidence ended up mostly supporting Stadius’s testimony. Jefferson’s reasons discuss neither expert, and the cell phone evidence does not appear in the document.
Mohammed Mahrous, Tellis’s former neighbor, testified that Tellis handed him a debit card bearing an Asian name with a PIN written on a sticky note beginning with 7 and asked him to withdraw $2,500 from a Chase branch in five transactions. ATM photographs placed Mahrous at the machine the morning of July 30, and Hsiao’s bank records show that her balance was checked from that ATM at that time.
Mahrous testified his conscience stopped him, that he checked the balance and returned the card, and that Tellis called him weak and told him to give it to his girlfriend instead. The defense did not cross-examine him. He does not appear in Jefferson’s reasons.
Detective Duane Cookson, the lead investigator, testified multiple times and at length and matched phone records to withdrawals one by one. Jones argued Hill knew the number and nature of Hsiao’s wounds when those details had never been made public, and that Cookson confirmed they were non-public. Neither Cookson nor that testimony appears in the reasons.
Hill’s recanting of his initial statement had handwriting consistent with Tellis’s on it. Hill had testified that after being put in the same pod as Tellis in prison, he recanted his statement to ensure his own safety and that of his cousin, who was also Tellis’s wife.
Donna Parks, of Ouachita Correctional Center IT, testified about the jail phone system. The prosecution’s position was that inmates know not to place three-way calls under their own PIN numbers. Parks is not mentioned. The reasons state only that no record substantiated a three-way call.
Tellis was interviewed by Monroe police in August 2015. Jones devoted a substantial portion of her closing to what he told investigators Aug. 11 and what he omitted: the Chase calls, the PIN, Mahrous, the Vicksburg, Mississippi, ATM withdrawals, the Exxon receipt. The reasons do not address his statements, nor the fact that his story changed every time he was confronted with new evidence.
The reasons also do not mention that 17 people had been DNA tested in connection with the case and that none of them were connected to the scene, or Jones’s argument and an expert’s testimony that 10 days of decomposition in a closed Louisiana apartment in July could have destroyed recoverable DNA.
Jefferson’s conclusion describes Hearn as having seen Tellis at the residence “and him inquiring about the victim’s whereabouts on July 27, 2015.” That detail does not appear in his own summary of her testimony a page earlier.
The document contains several errors, mostly typos, but oddly and ironically in a case against a man accused of another homicide prior to the one he’s being tried for, the charge is written as “second murder.” However, it’s probable that it means “second degree murder.”
The judge’s record
Jefferson is known by local police as “Let ‘Em Loose Larry,” according to multiple law enforcement officers. The tension in the courtroom, and arguably the controversy surrounding a verdict, were somewhat predictable after his handling of violent crime cases was raised in this prosecution before trial.
On Oct. 27, Jones filed a motion asking Jefferson to recuse himself under Louisiana Code of Criminal Procedure Articles 671A and B, arguing he could not conduct a fair and impartial trial. The motion cited three cases in which the state said Jefferson’s rulings were overturned on appeal.
In State v. Barnett, according to the motion, Jefferson downgraded a second degree murder conviction to manslaughter and set sentencing before appellate review could occur, prompting multiple interventions from higher courts.
In State v. Nabors, the motion states, a jury returned a verdict of second degree murder and Jefferson modified it to negligent homicide. Appellate courts reversed him.
In State v. Thomas, the state alleged Jefferson acquitted a defendant of kidnapping and armed robbery despite DNA evidence.
The motion further alleged Jefferson had shown personal animosity toward Jones, accusing her in open court of acting in bad faith, admonishing her publicly, and taking other actions the state described as humiliating prosecutors during hearings. The state argued that conduct could affect the outcome of Tellis’s trial.
Jefferson ruled on the motion himself and denied it. He found the state had presented no evidence of bias or prejudice, that the cases it cited were unrelated to the Tellis prosecution, and that the motion came well outside the 30-day window Louisiana law allows, the last substantive ruling in the case having issued in October 2022. He wrote that Jones’s own conduct, including interruptions and arguing after rulings, had contributed to tension in his courtroom.
“Any ruling in prior cases does not constitute a basis for recusal in this matter,” Jefferson wrote.
Nine months later, in a bench trial the defense had requested, he acquitted Tellis of second-degree murder.
What is not in dispute
Tellis was excluded as a DNA contributor, as was everyone else. No weapon was recovered. No blood linked to Hsiao was found in the searches. The date of death was established circumstantially. Eric Hill told at least four versions of his story. Those findings are supported by the record.
Tellis pleaded guilty in 2016 to unauthorized use of an access card and was sentenced to 10 years at hard labor as a habitual offender. He was ordered discharged from the murder case Thursday and is to be returned to Mississippi custody for a burglary charge. His expected release date from the Mississippi Department of Corrections is October 16, 2027.
Tellis was also tried twice in the 2014 burning death of Jessica Chambers of Courtland. Both trials ended in hung juries.