The capital murder retrial of Mason Sisk might roll over into next week, to resume testimony the morning of Monday, April 27. That’s if District Attorney Brian Jones and Defense Attorneys Michael Sizemore and Shay Golden cannot wrap up their cases in time to go to the jury by Friday afternoon.

Wednesday, April 19, was the third day of testimony in the retrial of Sisk, who is accused of shooting to death five family members nearly four years ago.

Mason, 14 at the time of the killings, is charged with the Labor Day 2019 weekend deaths of his father, John Wayne Sisk; stepmother, Mary Sisk; brother, Grayson, 6; sister, Aurora, 4, and infant brother, Colson, 6 months, while they lay sleeping.

The retrial is the result of a September trial that ended in a mistrial when newly retrieved messages from Mary’s cell phone came to light that might have a bearing on the case. That evidence is yet to be presented.

Wise adjourned court 4 p.m. Wednesday after Jones said he had 10 more witnesses to call and one of those might take as long as four hours to deliver evidence.

Wednesday’s proceedings were mostly taken up with chain-of-custody testimony by those who took charge of the bodies, as well as the viewing of three separate sets of body cam videos from responding officers after Mason called 911 to report the deaths.

Wise cautioned the 10-man, four-woman jury as well as press and family members and friends seated in the courtroom that the photos were graphic. He warned the gallery that if anyone thought the photos would be too disturbing, they should leave immediately.

However, the jury had no choice but to see the photos; part of their duties is to view all evidence.

No one from the gallery left the courtroom after Wise’s admonition, but when photos included those of the children’s autopsies, one person left the courtroom in tears. Mason Sisk, who has a naturally pale complexion, kept his eyes down and seamed to be flushed at the evidence.

Both autopsy photos and body cam footage were gruesome. Sizemore and Golden asked to approach the bench out of the presence of the jury to object to numerous photos of Grayson’s autopsy, contending that the photos were much more detailed than those presented of John Sisk’s and Mary Sisk’s autopsies.

“These are meant to inflame the jury’s emotions,” Golden said.

Wise agreed that the photos were “ghastly,” but he allowed them into evidence.

The crime scene body cam footage took on an eerie perspective even before the first three deputies entered the home where the bodies lay in their beds. In the total near midnight darkness, illumination came from flashing blue lights and flashlights. The house was dark.

Once in the house, deputies Rhett McNatt, Jake Abernathy and Justin Fields can be heard exclaiming their horror, cursing. As more deputies and Athens-Limestone EMS workers began to arrive there was more cursing and what sounded like vomiting.

Fields, who arrived first on the scene and found Mason sitting in a car near the road at the opening of the long driveway, acknowledged that after deputies inside the house radioed to place Mason in handcuffs, that Mason was not read his Miranda Rights, which is required by law to be given to crime suspects.

Testimony was to resume Thursday, April 20, at 8:45 a.m.