(CNN) A judge declared a mistrial Monday, October 16, in the case of a Mississippi teenager who was burned to death three years ago. The jury failed to reach a verdict. 
 
 Quinton Tellis, 29, was charged with capital murder because 19-year-old Jessica Chambers' death in December 2014 occurred during the commission of another crime, third-degree arson. 
 
 If convicted, Tellis could have faced life in prison after prosecutors did not seek the death penalty. Tellis, who was charged in 2016 while he was in prison on an unrelated charge, did not take the stand in his own defense in the trial that started October 9. 
 
 There appeared to be confusion among jurors before the judge declared the mistrial. The jury said it had reached a verdict and the court clerk read the not-guilty verdict recorded on a piece of paper. But at the prosecution's request, the judge polled the jury, and most jurors said their vote was guilty. 
 
 The judge reread the instructions. More than an hour later, the jury said it was deadlocked and couldn't reach a unanimous verdict after about nine hours of deliberation. 
 
 The state plans to retry the case 
 
 District Attorney John Champion said prosecutors plan to retry the case, CNN affiliate WREG reported. 
 
 Champion said he didn't consider the mistrial a loss. 
 
 "I've had hung juries many times ... and on the retrials we've come back and been successful on them. Some we have not," he told reporters. "You do this as long as I've done it, you're going to have days like this." 
 
 Defense attorney Alton Peterson said the confusion among jurors surprised him. 
 
 "I've been practicing 19 years," he said. "And I've never seen it happen before. It was very unusual," he said, WREG reported. 
 
 He added: "Beyond that, I'm not really sure what to say about it." 
 
 ATF: Teenager was set on fire with gasoline 
 
 Chambers had left her mother's house in pajama pants on December 6, 2014, reportedly to clean her car. Later, firefighters responded to a report of a car fire and found her in the burning car on a rural road near her home in Courtland, a northwest Mississippi town of about 500 people in Panola County. 
 
 Chambers was set on fire with gasoline, said investigators with the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. 
 
 She suffered third-degree burns over 95% of her body. 
 
 During the trial, eight first responders, including firefighters, testified they were at the scene when Chambers sad, "Eric set me on fire." She didn't give a last name. 
 
 Chambers died the next day in a Memphis hospital. 
 
 The defense focused on the fact that Chambers didn't name their client. 
 
 "She said Eric," Alton Peterson, one of Tellis' lawyers, said in closing arguments. "E.R.I.C. Eric." 
 
 But Champion, the district attorney, argued the fire severely injured Chambers and she could not pronounce her words clearly, and she may have been trying to say "Tellis," the Clarion-Ledger newspaper reported. 
 
 Prosecutors: Tellis deleted phone communication with teen 
 
 Local police, the FBI and an intelligence expert worked the case for months and looked at all people named Eric and Derek in the area after Chambers' death, authorities said. 
 
 The prosecution said it used cellphone technology, texts records, surveillance cameras and interviews to identify Tellis as a suspect. 
 
 At the time of Chambers' death, Tellis had deleted all communications with her from his phone and stopped checking on her, prosecutors said. 
 
 Tellis, who grew up in Courtland, had known Chambers for about two weeks, a friend said. 
 
 Tellis was arrested in February 2016 while he was an inmate in a Louisiana prison for using the debit card of a woman who had been killed, authorities said. He is still the prime suspect in that slaying, authorities said. ||||| A judge reportedly declared a mistrial in the case of a Mississippi man charged with killing Jessica Chambers, who was burned alive in her car. 
 
 
 
 This is the second time a jury failed to reach a verdict on murder charges against Quinton Tellis, 29. 
 
 Tellis had faced a capital murder charge for killing Chambers, then 19, in December 2014. A grand jury first indicted Tellis in 2016, but a trial in 2017 ended with a hung jury. The jury in the second trial began deliberating on Sunday. 
 
 
 
 Chambers was discovered burned alive in her car in Courtland, Mississippi, on December 6, 2014. When first responders arrived at the scene, Chambers was still alive but covered in second- and third-degree burns. She later died from her injuries, but not before reportedly telling medical personnel that "Eric did this to me." 
 
 The killing subsequently gripped the nation and ignited a cottage industry of internet sleuths determined to solve the case. 
 
 
 
 Months after Chambers' death — and with no suspects arrested — District Attorney John Champion called it "the most baffling case [he'd] ever worked on" in 22 years of employment with Panola County. Eventually, the local investigation expanded to include officials from the FBI, the US Marshals Service, and the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Officials put up billboards in three different states hoping to turn up leads and offered a $54,000 reward. 
 
 The breakthrough came after investigators analyzed "technological data" including cell phone records, Champion told reporters in February 2016, leading to Tellis's arrest and indictment for Chambers' murder. 
 
 "It wasn't until we received information from subpoenas and began analyzing information we obtained that certain things began falling in place," Champion said. 
 
 Chambers' father, Ben Chambers, said at a news conference at the time that his daughter "is at peace now." He also said that Chambers had never mentioned Tellis's name to the family.
– When first Mississippi responders came upon Jessica Chambers, she had been set on fire and was covered in second- and third-degree burns; she reportedly uttered "Eric did this to me," before dying. Attorneys for Quinton Tellis, the man on trial for her December 2014 death, argued that made for reasonable doubt, reports BuzzFeed. At least some members of the jury apparently had it: A judge on Monday declared a mistrial in the case. Tellis' first trial, in 2017, ended in a mistrial as well. Tellis was arrested in early 2016 after the local DA said a break in the perplexing case came via "technological data" like cellphone records; a DOJ analyst told the court Saturday that Tellis' phone data indicates he was with Chambers the night she died and that he wiped Chambers' texts and info from his phone after her death. BuzzFeed notes that Chambers' father had previously said Tellis' name wasn't known to the family, and the prosecution in this trial described a relationship between Chambers and Tellis that was only a week old. The Clarion Ledger reports the prosecution sought to chip away at the "Eric" detail: The medical director at the Firefighters Burn Center estimated she had been on fire for as long as five minutes, and he and a speech pathologist both testified that they don't believe the 19-year-old was capable of intelligible speech based on the severity of her burns. Tellis' attorney, Alton Peterson, thought doubt remained: "When you have eight trained first responders who were there on the scene ... it's hard to get around her telling them with her dying breaths that someone else did it." FOX13 reports prosecutors plan to "assess things" and then announce if they'll try Tellis a third time.