Tha kind of flexibility is the point of a jury. Laws aren't purely mechanical in most countries, for good reason. There's a lot of complexity and nuance, especially when some people have political power.
I don't have enough background here to make a judgement about what a jury should do, but I do have enough background to know that things like jury nullification are important to a well-functioning justice system.
In which case the prosecution will have plenty of grounds to screen for that in the next trial, that next trial will happen, and then the guy gets convicted of first degree murder. Presuming he's found in the first place.
There's no world in which all twelve jurors vote not guilty if the defendant is demonstrated to be the assassin beyond reasonable doubt. That simply won't happen, it's a delusion. Hanging the first trial would merely delay the inevitable, and I don't expect that to happen either.
No matter the evidence.
In the US there is an important distinction between the presumption of innocence, and its declaration in a court of law.
Someone with a hung jury or mistrial is still presumed not guilty by the law, but may be tried again for the same crime, because the prohibition against double jeopardy only applies to those cleared of a charge, which mistrials don't do.
In this case, it's a hard guarantee that a mistrial would be tried again. So yes, you would need consensus in a jury to prevent the conviction from eventually occurring, because there's no realistic chance of it happening twice.
It won't happen once either, but even if it did, it won't happen twice.
This is where you lose me. If you have a hung jury that means you have at least an 11/12 chance of it happening again.
Now, it's definitely true that getting a jury to nullify a murder charge is significantly different, but I'd argue there is a lot more anger about the healthcare system and CEOs making huge profits from human suffering in the US than there was about that statue, and much more generally too.
You also have a climate where a convicted felon just got made president, and another in a long line of presidents pardoning people they have close personal relationships too with clear conflict of interest. If you wanted to pick a moment where people in the US were losing faith in the justice system, now seems like a good choice, and if you believe the system is rigged, are you going to judge it on technicalities, or how you feel?
Do I think it is likely? No.
"No world it could happen", "delusional", and "won't happen"? I wouldn't be so sure.
This is like if $billionaire announced that he will publicly generate a fair signed 32 bit number, and give a specific person a billion dollars if the number is exactly 1234567. It would be delusional to think that will happen, there's no world in which it will, and it won't.
People who think otherwise are ignorant of the process of jury selection, and how straightforward it is to find twelve citizens who don't want to spit directly in the face of the judicial process (and judge) and let a bloody-handed murderer off the hook because of feelz. They're unable to separate their social media fantasies from the real world.
You're right, I do find it less likely that the murderer of a CEO would get the same kind of treatment as murderers of civil rights protesters, but there are examples in recent history of people walking free despite unambiguously murdering people in broad daylight for political reasons.