Source: THE AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

An Ar­gen­tine court on Thurs­day de­clared a mis­tri­al in the case of sev­en health pro­fes­sion­als ac­cused of neg­li­gence in the death of soc­cer leg­end Diego Maradona, the lat­est dra­mat­ic twist in a tri­al that has cap­ti­vat­ed the na­tion and the soc­cer world for more than two months.

The whiplash de­ci­sion comes af­ter one of the three judges over­see­ing the tri­al stepped down over crit­i­cism sur­round­ing her par­tic­i­pa­tion in a forth­com­ing doc­u­men­tary about the case.

Her con­tro­ver­sial with­draw­al com­pelled the court to ei­ther ap­point a new judge in her place or to retry the en­tire case from scratch.

On Thurs­day, the judges de­cid­ed the lat­ter, ef­fec­tive­ly turn­ing the clock back on all pro­ceed­ings in the case that ac­cus­es Maradona’s med­ical team of fail­ing to pro­vide ad­e­quate care for the soc­cer star in his fi­nal days.

The judges ruled there would be a new tri­al, with­out spec­i­fy­ing when.

Juli­eta Mak­in­tach said that she had “no choice” but to re­sign from the case on Tues­day, af­ter the pros­e­cu­tor showed a teas­er-trail­er for a doc­u­men­tary, Di­vine Jus­tice, which traces the af­ter­math of Maradona’s death at the age of 60 to the start of the trail, clear­ly fea­tur­ing Mak­in­tach as a main pro­tag­o­nist.

Maradona, who led Ar­genti­na to the World Cup ti­tle in 1986, died on Nov. 25, 2020 on the out­skirts of Buenos Aires, days af­ter un­der­go­ing surgery for a hematoma that formed be­tween his skull and brain. —BUENOS AIRES, Ar­genti­na (AP)