GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — Family members, attorneys, demonstrators, observers and Christopher Schurr spent Wednesday waiting as a jury continued to deliberate in the former officer’s murder trial in the death of Patrick Lyoya.
The jury worked from about 8:30 a.m. to a little after 4:30 p.m., but by the end of the day had not yet reached a verdict.
“I can’t comment on the proceedings while they’re going on, but the process is the jury’s deliberating. Nothing happened today. And so, we just wait,” one of Schurr’s defense attorneys, Matthew Borgula, told News 8 as he left the courthouse.
He noted it’s “not that unusual for a jury to be out for two or three days.”
“I’m not reading anything into it,” he said.
Christopher Schurr listens in a Grand Rapids courtroom on May 6, 2025, as a jury deliberates in his second-degree murder trial in the death of Patrick Lyoya.
Updates from Wednesday deliberations
Jurors had told the judge Tuesday afternoon they couldn’t reach a verdict. She told them to keep trying.
They had sat through more than week of testimony from 23 witnesses, including Schurr, before they got the case Monday afternoon. Their job is to decide whether it was murder when Schurr, then a Grand Rapids Police Department officer, shot and killed Patrick Lyoya following a traffic stop in April 2022.
An undated photo of Patrick Lyoya (Courtesy the Lyoya family)
Supporters of Schurr and the Lyoya family gathered outside the courthouse Wednesday, as they have for days. Schurr supporters had “thin blue line” flags. Lyoya supporters chalked the sidewalk with the message, “Justice 4 Patrick.”
On Tuesday, there was a commotion outside the courthouse involving demonstrators and police, but the situation was calmer Wednesday. There were a couple of verbal jabs between the two groups and officers stepped in once in the morning to help de-escalate. And there were plenty of more civil one-on-one conversations between supporters from both sides.
“I don’t necessarily have to agree with anyone’s thoughts or how they feel, but I think respect is respect,” Erykai Cage, a Lyoya supporter, told News 8. “We just want a verdict at this point. It’s all very emotional. It’s very draining physically, mentally and emotionally. It’s important that we receive a verdict.”
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Supporters of Christopher Schurr outside the Kent County Courthouse as a jury deliberates in his second-degree murder trial in the death of Patrick Lyoya. (May 7, 2025)
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Supporters of Patrick Lyoya demonstrate outside the Kent County Courthouse as a jury deliberates in Christopher Schurr’s second-degree murder trial. (May 7, 2025)
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Supporters of the Patrick Lyoya family use chalk to draw on the sidewalk outside the Grand Rapids courthouse where Christopher Schurr is standing trial for murder in Lyoya’s death. (May 7, 2025)
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Officers gather outside the courthouse as more demonstrators gather while the jury continues deliberating in the case of Christopher Schurr, who is charged with murder in the death of Patrick Lyoya. (May 7, 2025)
Schurr supporters, who declined an interview, shared the same sentiment. But, they said, the longer the deliberations go on, the more hopeful they are.
One demonstrator said he could understand both group’s perspectives. Carrying an American flag, he said he has been there to promote unity.
“I have mixed feelings about it. I don’t think he should have got shot in the back of the head. I think it was just a bad situation on both sides,” he said. “Look at what’s happening in this county, you know? I’m just tired of the division on both sides.”
Judge tells jurors to keep working after they say they’re deadlocked in Schurr case
The secrecy of the process means it’s impossible to say what has happened in the jury room during its nearly 20 hours of deliberations so far.
“Everyone’s waiting with bated breath — certainly the demonstrators, Officer Schurr, Patrick Lyoya’s family. Everybody wants closure. Everybody wants a conclusion to this,” Professor Tracey Brame of Cooley Law School told News 8 Wednesday. “But it really is in the jury’s hands now and it sounds like they took the judge seriously and are trying to do their job.”
She said the first statement that jurors couldn’t reach a verdict suggested some of them may have “entrenched opinions” that they may have to try to overcome by combing through the testimony. She acknowledged the decision is not easy in a case like this one.
“The initial deadlock was maybe the remnants of some notion of what they think happened or some perspective that they brought into the jury room,” Brame said. “And hopefully, they are now, again, peeling back those layers to try to put aside that polarization and say, ‘What happened in this case, regardless of what I think about these issues, about police policy, about the politics of it.’
“That’s what the judge has been asking them to do and the parties want them to do, is fight through the noise and look at what happened in this case,” she continued, “and it looks like they’re trying to do that.”
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