Harris County built one of the most active death penalty programs in the country over the past three decades. Research cited by the Marshall Project found the county among the small number of U.S. jurisdictions responsible for the majority of the nation’s death row population as of 2012, driven largely by former District Attorney Johnny B. Holmes, who averaged 12 capital sentences a year between 1992 and 2000. His successor, Chuck Rosenthal, secured them at roughly half that rate. Since 2008, the county has averaged a little more than one death sentence annually, a sharp decline from the Holmes era, though the office still carries a long track record of winning the capital cases it chooses to try.

That backdrop matters for understanding what happened in State of Texas v. Johnson, where Todd Mensing, a board-certified Houston trial attorney with AZA Law, joined a pro bono defense team that ended a 75-0 run for the Harris County District Attorney’s Office in capital murder trials. Prosecutors typically try the cases they believe they can win. Weaker cases tend to go to plea agreements instead, so a case that reaches trial has usually already survived internal scrutiny.

Mensing tried the case alongside Houston criminal defense attorney Christian Capitaine. The defendant did not testify. Jurors deadlocked eight to five toward acquittal, the court declared a mistrial, and the district attorney’s office declined a retrial.

A single case does not change the county’s long-term data. It does show the gap between an office’s historical win rate and the outcome of any individual trial, especially one that ends in a hung jury rather than a guilty plea. Mensing’s primary practice runs through commercial litigation, where he has tried more than 60 cases in Texas courts. This capital case is an outlier, both in his own career and against the county’s usual prosecutorial outcome.