The courtroom stayed quiet Monday after a judge announced that Miguel Quinones had been found not guilty of first-degree murder.
"I think everyone was just in shock," said Linda Hunter. Her son, Kareem Hunter, 28, died after being beaten in a Marmet apartment.
Quinones, 37, remained calm after hearing he had been acquitted of Hunter's murder, said his lawyer, Robert Dunlap.
"In private, he was so moved. He couldn't even articulate," Dunlap said.
Quinones, who has always maintained his innocence, had spent the last 2 1/2 years behind bars awaiting trial for Hunter's murder. By 4:30 p.m. Monday, he had been released from South Central Regional Jail.
Police believed Quinones was the main force behind Hunter's killing. Prosecutors never offered him a deal, as they did his two co-defendants, Deveron Patterson and Kelsey Legg.
During Quinones' trial, his lawyer told jurors that Patterson and Legg had placed the blame on his client so they would receive lighter sentences. Patterson pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in exchange for a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole; Legg received six to eight years in prison for being an accessory to murder.
Last Friday, jurors deliberated for about three hours before being sent home for the weekend. After returning to the courthouse at about 9 a.m. Monday, jurors spent about two hours deliberating before telling Kanawha Circuit Judge Joanna Tabit that they could not come to an agreement.
Tabit gave jurors an "Allen Charge," an instruction meant to encourage a deadlocked jury to continue deliberating by re-examining their views of the case.
It was just before 2 p.m. Monday, when jurors announced they had reached a verdict.
Linda Hunter didn't want to talk much Monday afternoon. She said she was not OK.
During the six-day trial, jurors viewed more than 100 exhibits and heard four days' worth of testimony.
Prosecutors spent a considerable amount of time trying to convince jurors that cellphone records tied Quinones to the slaying.
Police testified about evidence that showed Quinones' cellphone was in Marmet at the scene of the bloody beating. Cellphone towers then traced Quinones' phone to Beckley and to Old Turnpike Road on the day that Hunter died. Hunter's body was later found on that road.
Dunlap believes jurors realized that once police focused in on Quinones as the killer, they didn't consider any other suspects.
"They had the cellphones of other suspects and they admitted they never checked those logs," said Dunlap. "Had they checked those logs, it may have taken their investigation in a whole other direction."
Prosecutors told jurors that Quinones - jealous that his girlfriend might still be romantically involved with Hunter and nervous that Hunter might have been planning to rob him - attacked Hunter with a rubber mallet inside Legg's apartment in Marmet.
Dunlap, though, argued his client wasn't there when Hunter was killed, and only helped clean up Legg's bloody Marmet apartment in the days after the slaying.
Matthew Legg, Kelsey's brother, testified that he saw Quinones at his sister's apartment the night Hunter was killed.
Another man who took the stand during the trial that had seen Patterson and another man in Raleigh County, near where Hunter's body was found, said he couldn't be sure that Quinones was the man Patterson was with.
Duct tape was tied around Hunter's mouth, hands and feet, and he was stuffed into the trunk of a car, driven to Raleigh County and buried in a shallow grave.
Patterson testified that he had helped Quinones kill Hunter. Prosecutors revealed during the trial that it was Patterson who told police where to find Hunter's body - which wasn't found until more than a month after his death.
Legg was originally charged with murder before Hunter's body was found. She was never called to testify during the trial, as she had agreed to do as part of her plea deal.
Kanawha first assistant prosecutor Don Morris wouldn't say during the trial why prosecutors decided not to call Legg to the stand, and he couldn't be reached for comment Monday afternoon. Assistant prosecutor Jennifer Gordon didn't want to comment after the verdict on Monday.
Quinones was arrested on a parole violation before being charged in Hunter's death. Quinones was convicted 16 years ago of second-degree murder in Fayette County. In 2000, a jury found him guilty of killing Christopher Reardon, a Beckley bar owner. He was released from prison over that incident in 2011, but remained on probation.
After Hunter's death, Quinones was found in 2014 by police hiding in his girlfriend's attic.
Quinones' case was delayed a number of times since he was indicted on the murder charge in early 2014, mainly because of his requests for new attorneys.
Dunlap and an attorney who works with him, Amy Osgood, who also represented Quinones at trial, marked the ninth and 10th attorneys Quinones was appointed.
The week before his trial began, Quinones tried again to change lawyers. A frustrated Tabit gave Quinones an ultimatum: He would either remain with Dunlap and Osgood or represent himself at trial.
"He had a large number of attorneys because he felt like, whoever represents him had to believe in his innocence or it wasn't going to work. He just wanted to make sure his trial was fair and that he had a chance," Dunlap said Monday.
Reach Kate White at kate.white@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-1723 or follow @KateLWhite on Twitter.