Jason Meade was found guilty Thursday of reckless homicide in the 2020 shooting death of Casey Goodson Jr., while jurors deadlocked on the more serious murder charge in his retrial. The Franklin County panel had begun its first full day of deliberations on Thursday before reaching the split verdict.
For the Goodson family, the verdict delivered a measure of accountability after a 2024 murder trial ended without agreement. Meade, then a Franklin County Sheriff’s deputy assigned to a federal task force serving warrants, had said Goodson was waving a gun as he drove by. He followed Goodson to his grandmother’s house, ordered him to drop the weapon and then shot him to death.
The trial turned on whether Goodson heard those orders and whether the shots struck him in the back. Special prosecutor Gary Merkle told jurors, “Mr. Meade knowingly caused serious harm to Casey Goodson that resulted in his death.” Defense attorney Mark Collins argued, “(Meade) had no pause button, he had no crystal ball, he had no duty to wait for the first shot.”
Judge David Young read a Howard Charge at about 2:25 p.m. after jurors said they were having a difficult time reaching a verdict, urging them to keep working through the evidence. They were back in deliberations by 2:53 p.m., and later returned a verdict that left Meade guilty of reckless homicide but not convicted on murder.
The retrial was the second time a Franklin County jury had been asked to decide whether Meade’s actions in 2020 were criminally murder. This time, jurors did not accept the defense’s argument that he had to make a split-second decision, and they did not agree that the case rose to murder. What they did decide is that Meade’s conduct was reckless enough to convict him of killing Goodson.