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Ten convenience stores. Twenty-eight counts. Nine defense lawyers. And in the end, what nearly upended a month-long federal trial wasn't a witness or a piece of forensic evidence — it was something two jurors found in a pocket that nobody had bothered to check.

The case against Shamell Naquan Joyner seemed, on paper, straightforward: prosecutors alleged he robbed seven 7-Elevens and several gas stations across Washington, Maryland and northern Virginia in the spring of 2023, carjacking vehicles along the way. What made the case anything but straightforward was a discovery jurors made during deliberations — one that had sat undetected in the evidence room for over two years.

What the Jurors Found

On July 22, the second day of deliberations, a juror flagged something to courthouse staff. Inside a jacket recovered from one of the carjacked vehicles — clothing prosecutors said had been worn by the robber — jurors found a folded piece of paper containing a white powdery substance. According to the jury foreperson's account to the court the following morning, a juror reaching into the jacket's breast pocket pulled out what looked like a receipt, only for white powder to spill out slightly before it was placed back in the bag.

A second item turned up in a sweatshirt, also part of the case's physical evidence. A juror reached into its pocket and pulled out a crumpled bill — a Chinese yuan note.

Neither item had been part of the prosecution's case. Neither had been examined, flagged or disclosed by law enforcement, the DC US Attorney's Office, or Joyner's own defense team before trial.

Why It Mattered So Much

The discovery wasn't just an embarrassing oversight — it touched the heart of the government's case.

Prosecutors had built part of their argument around testimony that Joyner stole cash during several armed robberies, including one incident where a witness said the robber took a wallet containing a Chinese yuan from a college study-abroad trip. A separate cooperating witness testified that Joyner once paid him in drugs the night of an alleged gas station robbery. The jacket containing the suspected drugs was, according to prosecutors, the same one worn by the armed robber.

In other words, the items jurors stumbled onto in the jury room appeared to corroborate testimony already given at trial — evidence that had never been vetted, tested or entered into the record, now sitting in the hands of jurors weighing Joyner's guilt.

The Judge's Reaction

Judge Rudolph Contreras, who has spent a decade on the federal bench, didn't hide his own disbelief. In a written opinion issued days later, he said the court shared in Joyner's own amazement at how law enforcement had failed to catch the yuan, the note and the powdery substance during its own review of the physical evidence. From the bench, he also needled one of Joyner's attorneys, John Liolos — noting, given that Liolos is from New York, he was likely just as stunned that money had slipped past a police department's evidence process undetected.

Longtime Washington attorneys told CNN they couldn't recall a comparable situation, though some former prosecutors acknowledged that every few years, a jury does stumble onto evidence law enforcement simply didn't examine closely enough. The FBI declined to comment on how agents overlooked the items, and a spokesperson for the US Attorney's Office did not directly answer questions about how the oversight happened.

A Trial Nearly Derailed

The discovery forced Contreras into uncertain legal territory: had the jury now been improperly influenced by evidence the defense never had a chance to challenge?

The judge brought each juror into the courtroom individually, explained that the yuan and the suspected drugs were not part of the case's evidence, and asked whether they could set those items aside in weighing Joyner's guilt. Each juror said they could. Deliberations resumed.

A Jury Divided

Even setting the surprise evidence aside, consensus proved elusive. By the following Monday — the fifth day of deliberations — jurors informed the court they were deadlocked on more than half the charges against Joyner, unable to reach a verdict on 15 of the 28 counts, including five armed robberies and one carjacking. Jurors said their disagreement centered on how to define reasonable doubt and how to establish identity beyond it, and that without additional evidence or testimony, those counts would remain unresolved.

Contreras accepted a partial verdict and ended deliberations. The jury's inability to reach consensus on a significant share of the charges mirrored a pattern the US Attorney's Office has faced in several other trials this year — a reminder that Joyner's case, however unusual its evidence mishap, wasn't the office's only recent struggle to secure full convictions from DC juries.

The Verdict

Despite the deadlock, jurors convicted Joyner on 13 of the 28 counts — covering an armed robbery in mid-April 2023 in downtown Washington, along with four armed robberies and a carjacking on May 2, 2023, in Northwest Washington and Maryland. Joyner was never charged with drug possession, despite the suspected substance found in the jacket.

A spokesperson for the US Attorney's Office framed the outcome as a win for public safety, saying the verdict locks in a mandatory minimum sentence that keeps a serial robber off DC streets.

What Comes Next

Joyner's defense team has not yet filed an appeal and declined to comment, citing the case's unresolved final judgment. But between the deadlocked counts, the unvetted evidence that nearly complicated the entire case, and a judge publicly on record as "amazed" by how it happened, the trial leaves behind more open questions than most convictions typically do — questions that may follow the case well past its verdict.