Jury deadlocks on sentencing man in wife’s 1999 killing

HOUSTON – A jury that convicted a former Houston-area high school football coach for a second time in his pregnant wife’s 1999 killing could not decide on a sentence, so the judge has declared a mistrial for that portion of the trial.

The judge Friday declared the mistrial for the sentencing of David Mark Temple after the Harris County jury couldn’t agree on a punishment after 19 hours of deliberation. The conviction will stand, but a new jury will have to be seated to determine the sentence.

Prosecutors are seeking a life prison term.

Belinda Temple was a high school teacher who was seven months pregnant when she was killed in January 1999. A jury convicted her husband of murder in 2007, but Texas’ top criminal court overturned that conviction in 2016 because prosecutors had withheld evidence.