For the second time in 11 months, an Allegheny County jury was declared hopelessly deadlocked in the homicide trial of Steven Tielsch in the fatal shooting 15 years ago of a Canadian rabbinical student. District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. must decide whether to prosecute him a third time. The panel of seven men and five women failed Monday to convict Tielsch by a single vote on charges of killing Neal Rosenblum, 24, of Toronto. Jurors deliberated about 16 hours over three days before telling Common Pleas Judge W. Terrence O'Brien they couldn't reach a unanimous verdict. Tielsch, 39, of Penn Hills, made no comment as he was escorted back to the Allegheny County Jail. Defense attorney William Difenderfer said he was disappointed by the mistrial, adding he hopes Tielsch won't be tried a third time. "The evidence in this case to me was so thin, and so weak and actually disgusting with jail slime that it offends me that a person's fate could be determined by that," said Difenderfer, who derided the prosecution for using two jailhouse informants, Sanford Gordon and Michael Starr, for the crux of its case. Zappala said last night he has to review the entire case before deciding whether to retry the case a third time. "There's a lot of work to be done. But it shouldn't take long. I'd like to see the matter come to closure. I'll deal with that." Zappala said he believes the testimony in the second trial was stronger than it was in the first. Deputy District Attorney Daniel Fitzsimmons agreed. "Having spent some time with the jury, I'm very encouraged about the prospect of a retrial. It's up to the district attorney to make the decision. We'll have to evaluate the situation in the next couple days and make a decision whether we will try this case again." Rosenblum was gunned down April 17, 1986, on Pittock Street in Squirrel Hill. He told police before he died that he was shot after he approached a black Corvette to give directions to two men. Fitzsimmons called Rosenblum's parents shortly after the mistrial. The victim's mother, Penina Rosenblum, is convinced of Tielsch's guilt. "He'll get what he deserves," she said Jury foreman James Grider, 43, of Moon Township, an aircraft mechanic, said the lone holdout, a male whom he wouldn't identify, didn't believe the testimony given by two jailhouse informants who claimed Tielsch admitted the killing. "He didn't think there was enough hard evidence, no fingerprints," said juror Maureen Welker of Whitehall, who said she was one of four jurors who thought Tielsch was guilty when the first vote was taken. To sort through a mountain of what she called "circumstantial evidence," Welker drew a picture of a stick figure as they deliberated that convinced her Tielsch is guilty. "That stick person was Steven Tielsch," she said. "Surrounding the picture were different facts. All those facts pointed to Tielsch. The panel had indicated Friday that it was deadlocked, and O'Brien sent the jury home for the weekend with instructions to return yesterday for more deliberations. At 1:40 p.m., another note from the jury indicated it still was deadlocked. Sanford Gordon, 50, of Dormont, a former cellmate of Tielsch's at the Allegheny County Jail, testified that the defendant admitted to him in 1988 that he fired shots out the window of his black Corvette at "a priest in East Liberty." Gordon said he knew Tielsch was referring to Rosenblum. Michael Starr, 38 a former federal prisoner who served time for drugs and money laundering, claimed he was confronted by Tielsch in 1991 at a Strip District nightclub where the defendant allegedly admitting "whacking a Jew (expletive)." Some jurors found Gordon's testimony convincing. Juror Angie Seller agreed there was enough evidence that proved Tielsch's guilt, most influential being the testimony of Gordon. "All the circumstantial evidence pointed to his guilt," Sellers said. In his closing argument, Fitzsimmons had told the jury that Gordon gave details, including a traffic ticket Tielsch received on the Parkway East on May 7, 1986, that he wouldn't have known unless Tielsch had told him. Grider said the first vote taken by the jury had four for guilty and the rest "maybes." The next vote was eight guilty and four not guilty, he said. When the jury broke for the weekend, Grider said it was nine guilty and three not guilty. The foreman said the last vote taken one hour before the panel was declared deadlocked, was 11-1 for conviction. "I felt very strong about what I heard in the courtroom," particularly the testimony about Tielsch's interrogation after his arrest in February 2000, said Kerry Beck of the North Hills, who works in human resources. "I would like to see (the case) tried again," said Beck, who said she voted for a guilty verdict. The prosecution claimed that Tielsch changed his story when interviewed by Allegheny County Homicide Detective Regis Kelly, saying he never drove around Squirrel Hill, then admitting he did so and allowed his friend, Kevin Ohm, to drive his Corvette. Ohm, of Penn Hills, who had been questioned by police about being with Tielsch the night Rosenblum was killed, died in August 1991 when Tielsch crashed his Pontiac 6000 while speeding. Tielsch later was convicted of vehicular homicide. The Rosenblums attended the first days of the trial but did not want to be there for the end. Penina Rosenblum said she was disappointed by the mistrial. "I'm surprised that it's 11-1," said Rosenblum, reached by telephone at her home in Toronto. "It seems that a lot of people know he's guilty." Penina and her husband, Arthur, have been putting off a vacation to Israel until the trial was over. "I just wanted it to be over. There's never closure when it's your child," she said. John Burkoff, associate dean of the University of Pittsburgh Law School, said, "It's a very difficult call for the judge" to determine when a trial is deadlocked. "There are competing interests. On the one hand, it may take the jury a long time to go through the testimony and listen to and respect the other jurors' thoughts. On the other hand, you don't want them sitting so long that they begin to harass one another. "The trial judge needs to play it by ear, and use discretion in trying to decide how long is too long, and whether or not to give the jury a mild push." If the case has to be tried again, Burkoff said, "You have to consider all the expense, the suffering of the families and the witnesses who have to go through examination and cross-examination another time." "There comes a time, and there's no magic number of hours or days, the jury will simply be hung," he said.

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