Attorneys, witnesses react to mistrial in Johnson County sheriff’s criminal case
Johnson County Sheriff Adam King will continue to serve as the county’s top law enforcement official, even as he awaits a potential new trial on a charge of retaliating against a witness, King said Tuesday.
“I’m going to continue to do what the voters elected me to do,” King told reporters as he left the Guinn Justice Center in Cleburne with his family on Tuesday evening.
King’s limited comments came minutes after a judge declared a mistrial in the original effort to convict him of retaliating against the office’s chief deputy, who cooperated with the Texas Rangers on an investigation into King’s alleged sexual harassment of a female employee.
Jurors said Tuesday afternoon that they were hopelessly deadlocked and could not come to an agreement on a verdict, with one juror telling the court that no amount of further deliberation could persuade them to change their mind. The jury deliberated for about six hours on Monday and eight hours on Tuesday before the mistrial was declared.
“We always felt confident that there would not be a conviction, so it was certainly the outcome that we hoped for,” Bill Mason, a defense attorney for King, said of the mistrial. As King departed the courthouse Tuesday, he told reporters that he still maintains his innocence in the case.
In the coming weeks, Mason and co-counselors Matt Smid and Mark Daniel will come together to sort out what could’ve gone better with their defense strategy during this trial, Mason said. Mason did not elaborate on what specific areas he believed needed improvement.
Smid and Daniel, who conducted a majority of the cross-examination for the defense, did not take questions from reporters, electing instead to have Mason speak for the group.
The trial has been “high-anxiety” for King and his family, Mason said. Still, King will continue to run the Sheriff’s Office while in legal limbo because he was elected to do so.
“I think each one of the people involved care about the safety of the community,” Mason said in reference to the fact that several employees of King’s office testified against him at trial. “I know Sheriff Adam King does, and the other law enforcement officers involved have lived their careers trying to protect the public, do what’s right and follow the law.”
The conditions that allowed King to return to work earlier this year remain in place as he awaits a potential new trial, Mason said. He is prohibited from contacting any witnesses in the case and is restricted to three days a week in the office.
Defense attorneys elected not to call any witnesses in the trial, including King, because they felt at that point that prosecutors had failed to meet the burden of proof for the charges, Mason said. King, who was willing to testify, ultimately elected not to on the grounds of his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination.
Former Chief Deputy James Saulter, the witness against whom King is accused of retaliating, told reporters Tuesday that he “lives to fight another day.”
“I’m OK with it,” Saulter said of the jury’s impasse. “We’ll just all go regroup and see what comes next. That’s what our justice system is.”
Saulter, who testified for hours near the trial’s opening, described his involvement with the case as “going through hell,” and said the case had taken a great toll on himself and his wife. Saulter was placed on leave last year around the time that King was indicted, and the sheriff later fired him.
On Tuesday afternoon, Saulter projected willingness to go ahead with wherever the case takes him next.
“We’ll be fine,” Saulter said. “We’ll get through this, and we’ll see what it brings next.”
This story was originally published July 7, 2026 at 10:45 PM.
