The jury began deliberating in Columbus, Ohio, on Wednesday in the murder retrial of former Franklin County sheriff’s deputy Jason Meade, who is charged in the fatal shooting of 23-year-old Casey Goodson Jr. The case has returned for a second jury more than two years after a prior proceeding ended in a mistrial.
Prosecutors allege that during an encounter in December 2020, Meade shot Goodson—who is Black—five times in the back as Goodson tried to enter his grandmother’s home. The charging case includes murder and reckless homicide tied to the shooting, with Meade facing the same core factual questions the first trial tested.
The case has unfolded against the backdrop of national protests that swept the country in 2020 over the killing of George Floyd, and it has drawn renewed attention to a series of deadly encounters in which Black people were killed by white law enforcement officers in Ohio over the previous decade. Goodson’s death also became part of a broader civil rights dispute that his family pursued in federal court.
Goodson’s family reached a $7 million civil settlement in 2024 in a federal civil rights lawsuit against Franklin County. In testimony during earlier proceedings, Meade’s version of events centered on fear for his safety and on whether Goodson reached for a weapon, but the prosecution and defense now face the jury again with the factual disagreements at the center of the retrying case.
During closing arguments Wednesday, defense attorney Mark Collins told jurors that the jury must decide whether the gun Meade had seen “twice” was the same gun that killed him. Collins argued that the law does not require perfection from law enforcement officers and urged an acquittal, saying the standard is reasonableness. He told the jury, “Jason had to decide, ladies and gentlemen, whether the gun he had already seen twice was going to be the gun that killed him,” and continued that Meade “had no pause button,” “had no crystal ball,” and “had no duty to wait for the first shot.”
The state’s closing argument focused on motive and on the contested circumstances of the shooting. Special prosecutor Howard Tim Merkle asked jurors, “Who’s got a motive here to deceive?” and argued that the defense had not made its case that Meade was acting in self-defense when he shot Goodson. Merkle said the evidence did not support the defense suggestion that Casey Goodson turned and pointed a gun, and he pointed to the location of the gunshots, arguing there were “six shots in his back” rather than his front.
Prosecutors have also emphasized that there is no bodycam video of the shooting. They have said Meade is the only person who testified that Goodson was holding a gun, and they have argued that the record supports that account. Goodson’s family and legal team dispute that characterization and have said Goodson was holding a Subway sandwich bag in one hand and his keys in the other when he was shot.
Meade testified in the first trial in 2024 but is not testifying in this retrial, according to the reporting. In that earlier trial, Meade said he pursued Goodson after Goodson waved a gun as the two drove past one another and that he feared for his life and for the lives of others. Meade testified then that he eventually shot Goodson because Goodson turned toward him with a gun.
The parties also dispute how the shooting happened, including what Goodson had when Meade fired. Prosecutors have said Goodson’s weapon was found under his body on his grandmother’s kitchen floor with the safety mechanism engaged, a detail that has fed arguments about whether and how Goodson posed a threat at the moment of the shots.