The summer of 2022 will be capital punishment season at the Broward courthouse, with prosecutors attempting to send five men to Florida’s death row.
The large number reminds veteran lawyers of a long-ago era when such cases were more common and convicted killers faced the electric chair rather than lethal injection.
“At one point in the 80s it seemed like every murder-one case was a death penalty case,” said defense lawyer Hilliard Moldof. “I was doing one or two a year. But back then you tried a death penalty case a year from arrest.”
Defendants include rapper YNW Melly (whose real name is Jamell Demons), accused of gunning down two fellow musicians in Miramar and attempting to cover-up the crime as a drive-by shooting. Another prominent case is that of Parkland school killer Nikolas Cruz.
Other defendants include Richard Andres and Jonathan Gordon, accused of shooting a Tamarac man in his home, in an attack partly captured on videotape. Finally there’s the case of Peter Avsenew, who prosecutors say shot two Wilton Manors men to death and stole their car, credit cards and other belongings, apparently after responding their sexually suggestive ad on Craigslist.
Multiple factors prolong the pre-trial period of newer death penalty cases, including the sophistication of forensic evidence and mountains of case law outlining mistakes to avoid for lawyers and judges. Another factor is the pandemic that brought normal life to a halt for more than a year.
“I think a lot of the reason you’re seeing all these cases at once is because of COVID,” said defense lawyer Fred Haddad. “That backlog prevented all those cases from going forward, and the Florida Supreme Court wants them done. They’ve got to get those cases tried.”
Andres and Gordon, accused of killing the Tamarac man, were ready to go to trial when the pandemic hit. Instead of starting in the spring of 2020, jury selection in the case just got underway this week. The defendants are accused of the 2015 murder of Ivan Brandt, in a crime that was caught on surveillance video.
According to the investigation, the defendants struggled with the victim, who defended himself with a knife. Police said Andres named Gordon as an accomplice and admitted they went to Brandt’s home to rob him. The suspects’ attorneys deny those allegations and indicated a possible variation of a self-defense strategy in a 2020 interview.
Jury selection also began Monday for the retrial of Peter Avsenew who was already on death row in January when the Florida Supreme Court overturned his conviction and sent the case back to Broward.
Avsenew killed a Wilton Manors couple, Kevin Powell, 52, and Stephen Adams, 47, and stole their car in late 2010, according to prosecutors. His mother, who was instrumental in his capture, testified against him at his first trial but died before the start of retrial.
Attorneys are expecting jury selection in both cases to take about a month. Each case will involve a guilt phase, in which the jury determines whether the defendants committed the crimes, and a penalty phase if the defendants are convicted. In the penalty phase, all 12 jurors must recommend death in order for the defendants to be sent to death row.
The five defendants facing death at the same time in Broward would have been six if not for last week’s decision to waive the death penalty in the case of Dayonte Resiles, who was convicted in March of the 2014 stabbing death of Jill Halliburton Su of Davie.
In the YNW Melly case, jury selection was scheduled to start last month, but now it’s put off until July 6.
None of the other cases has attracted nearly as much attention as the Marjory Stoneman Douglas trial. The jury that will decide Cruz’s fate is still being picked, but selection was halted earlier this week when, it appears, three of the lawyers on the case fell ill at the same time.
The Parkland case is more complex than the others and will take longer at each stage. Jury selection started in April and is expected to go through May and possibly into June because the case is so notorious. And because it involves 17 murdered victims, the judge is telling potential jurors that testimony will last through September.
There hasn’t been an execution in Florida since 2019, before the pandemic. Since 2000, the busiest year for executions was 2014, with eight. That beat the previous 21st century record, seven in 2013. The last Broward inmate to be executed was Robert Henry in 2014. The next Florida inmate to be executed will be the 100th since the death penalty was found constitutional again in 1972.
Rafael Olmeda can be reached at rolmeda@sunsentinel.com. Call or text him at 954-356-4457. Follow him on Twitter @rolmeda.
