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Thread: Death Penalty Trial: Ernst Cherizard Pleads Guilty in 2019 FL Triple Murder

  1. #11
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
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    That’s the way it should be. If you’re being tried for capital murder or first degree murder, you shouldn’t be allowed to cop a plea to avoid the death penalty
    Thank you for the adventure - Axol

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  2. #12
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Its been six months since he pled guilty. Why the heck is taking so long to sentence him?
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  3. #13
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    2 years and 3 mths. and still waiting to see when he is sentenced...
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  4. #14
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Defense attorney in 8 death penalty cases calls Polk jail policies unconstitutional

    By Paul Nutcher
    Lakeland Ledger

    A defense lawyer representing multiple Polk County defendants facing capital murder charges is trying to roll back jail policies that she alleges restrict communications with her clients awaiting trial at the county jail and violates their constitutional rights.

    A hearing is set for Jan. 9 to hear testimony and arguments in the 10th Judicial Circuit Court in Bartow on motions filed by Debra Tuomey.

    Ultimately, the policies restrict “effective” and “efficient” defense of her clients, Tuomey said in her motions, which could impact as many as eight death penalty cases pending in the court.

    Among her motions, she has asked Circuit Judge J. Kevin Abdoney to allow her and her defense team the use of their own laptops during consultations at the jail. They also have asked the court to allow their clients access to written “legal mail” instead of a scanned copy of the attorney-client letters.

    The Polk County Jail started looking into the use of a mail scanner, including legal correspondence between detainees at the jail and their lawyers, after a 2016 incident in which inmates were sickened through contraband that was unknowingly delivered to the jail by a lawyer on documents laced with chemicals, according to testimony at an October hearing. The jail policy toward attorneys bringing laptops and smart phones to client consultations also changed after the Sheriff's Office found that images taken inside the jail were posted to social media accounts.

    What’s in the motion?

    In the capital murder case of the State vs David Murdock, Tuomey filed a “motion for protective order and motion to compel reasonable access to counsel and digital evidence” on July 12. In it, she cites the U.S. Constitution’s First, Second, Fifth and 14th Amendments as well as corresponding rights in the Florida Constitution.

    Murdock is facing two counts of capital first-degree murder and is detained at the Polk County Jail in Frostproof. The Polk County Sheriff’s Office manages and maintains the jail.

    The Sheriff’s Office changed jail policy on Oct. 14, 2021, stating that attorneys were no longer allowed to use their own personal laptops when meeting with clients in secure housing and interview booths.

    “The (policy) letter specifies no professional visitor shall be allowed to bring a cell phone, camera, or smart device capable of transmitting or receiving calls or taking pictures inside the secure facility of interview booth,” Tuomey’s motion said.

    Further, detainees at the jail do not receive physical mail, which is also scanned but through a different software application. And when “legal mail” is sent, it is opened in the presence of the inmate and scanned into a legal mail account, the motion said. The detainee then views the correspondence via an online account.

    The detainees are required to stand and read the legal mail from one of three computer screens at kiosks inside the housing units where the screens can be seen by other inmates and detention deputies.

    A few years after the contraband incident had hospitalized some inmates, the jail started to research using a scanner to prevent contraband entering the jail via mail. The Sheriff’s Office entered into an agreement with Smart Communication Holdings Inc. of Seminole in a contract dated Dec. 9, 2022 for mail scanning.

    The legal mail policy violates Murdock’s “access to the courts, right to freedom of speech and his Sixth Amendment right to have unfettered confidential communication with his attorneys and defense team,” Tuomey wrote.

    Tuomey’s motion asks the court for an order preventing the Polk County Sheriff’s Office detention facility from scanning legal mail into the Smart Mail legal email account without the approval of the detainee’s lawyer. She wants the court to order that any legal mail already scanned be deleted and proof from the Sheriff’s Office that its servers and electronic devices have been sanitized.

    Further, Tuomey wants an order allowing Murdock’s defense team to have private visits alone and of a reasonable length of time. And she asks that the defense team be allowed to bring their own laptops.

    “The jail also allows offsite video professional visits, but such visitation is limited to a fifteen (15) minute session at a cost of $12.95 per session,” the motion said. These non-contact, in-person, professional visitations are available during three spans of visiting hours between 7:30 a.m. and 10:30 p.m. If an attorney arrives 30 minutes before the close of visiting hours, they are turned away.

    Tuomey filed the motion with the court after a mitigation specialist and member of Murdock’s defense team was told she could not bring her laptop into the visitation room and told to put it back in her vehicle, the motion said.

    In court in October, Abdony called the motions “prayers” and said he did not think the criminal court had jurisdiction to strike down the sheriff’s jail policy.

    “My basic observation is I have jurisdiction to do individual things in individual criminal cases but not to say whether a sheriff’s policy at a jail is going to stand or not,” Abdoney said.

    Tuomey had said in court filings that, in matters of constitutional law, the judicial branch of government was not stepping on the authority of the executive and legislative branches by ruling on her motion.

    “If the court finds that there is a constitutional violation by the Sheriff’s Office, then your honor does in fact have jurisdiction,” she said in court.

    'I don't know what's on the paper'

    The motions filed at the Bartow courthouse were deliberated during an afternoon hearing Oct. 13 before Abdoney.

    Murdock was one of eight defendants in the court on Oct. 13 claiming through their legal team that they cannot get effective and efficient representation because of the jail policies.

    The other death penalty defendants were Marlon Tyrone Burgess, Joshua Emanuell Badillo, Ernst Cherizard, Ladevon Rashon Cottingham, Regis Johnson and Antonio Davis.

    Tuomey had filed similar motions in the state’s cases against Tony "TJ' Wiggins, who is expected to stand trial in July in the slayings of three people in Frostproof in 2020; and Marcelle Jerrill Waldon, who is accused of the murders of two people at a Lake Morton Drive home in Lakeland. Waldon's trial is set to start on Jan. 15.

    Mario Cabrera, a lawyer for the Sheriff’s Office, squared off with Tuomey and her team during a nearly four-hour hearing.

    Among the witnesses to testify in October was Chief Michael Allen with the Sheriff’s Office. He oversees the agency’s two detention facilities, booking facility and inmate transportation, among other duties.

    Tuomey asked him about the processing of general and legal mail addressed to inmates and detainees at the jail.

    He described a “legal cart” as a device developed by Smart Communications for inmates to visit in a vestibule area separate from the jail’s housing unit, and it provides detainees and inmates access to legal correspondence with their lawyers.

    “On that cart, it has a computer, it has a scanner and it has a shredder,” Allen said. "It also has a screen that only the inmate can see. A deputy assigned to the legal cart brings the cart to the inmate and their legal mail is opened by the detainee in the presence of the deputy."

    The inmate scans their mail and can view it on the screen, Allen said, then has the option to keep the hard copy or shred it.

    Tuomey asked Allen what would happen if the detainee declined to scan the mail for storage on the Smart network. Allen said the mail would then be placed “in property,” which would only be returned to the detainee after leaving the jail.

    Allen said the shredding of mail started in 2019 in part because of the 2016 incident, when 13 inmates were exposed to chemicals on laced paper, including bug spray and methamphetamine. Four of them nearly died at the hospital, he said.

    “Once we found out, we looked for a solution to stop that from happening again,” Allen said. The Sheriff’s Office first looked at Smart Communications' mail system in November 2017 for regular mail.

    But then a defense lawyer unknowingly passed laced documents to an inmate and then the Sheriff’s Office decided to ask Smart Communications for help in developing a mail system for legal correspondence as well.

    In Sept. 12, 2018, nine arrests were made after K2, a synthetic cannabinoid compound, was found to have been sprayed on paper and sold in transactions totaling $4,500.

    Sheriff Grady Judd had discussed the operation during a news conference. He said documents passed to inmates unknowingly by at least one attorney were reaching inmates, who were eating the paper or finding an electric spark to ignite it and then inhaling the smoke.

    In cross-examination, Tuomey asked Allen, “If the legal mail is scanned into Smart Communications' network and the inmate elects to place that legal mail, the original legal mail, in their personal property and it contains some type of contraband, are you saying that the Polk County Sheriff’s Office is now or could potentially be housing contraband at the jail?”

    Allen responded, “I don’t know what is on the paper, ma'am. That is their choice to shred it or place it in personal property. I just have the responsibility to make sure that while they are in the jail they don’t get their hands on any documents that could hurt them.”

    She asked how he knew whether a document was laced, and Allen said there was no way to tell. Tuomey then asked whether the Sheriff’s Office was familiar with a hand-held drug scanning system for detecting contraband within envelopes being used in facilities elsewhere.

    Allen said he had been approached by the company that developed such a system, but the agency opted for the Smart system.

    'Postings that were being done on Facebook'

    Tuomey also questioned Allen about a prohibition on smart phones and other electronic devices capable of taking photos being brought into client-attorney meetings at the jail.

    Allen said the Sheriff’s Office provides as many as 10 computers for attorneys to use during attorney booth visits with their clients. That policy was initiated after the Sheriff’s Office became aware that photos of inmates were posted to Facebook that had been uploaded by incarcerated inmates.

    “There were postings that were being done on Facebook at the time that people who were incarcerated were in the attorney booth, and these postings came out at the time they were in the attorney booth. He said the postings contained messages. He was not sure who posted them," he said.

    Tuomey also asked Allen about the potential for computer viruses being transmitted from Sheriff’s Office computers to attorneys' laptops through the thumb drives attorneys use to show their clients documents. Allen said the computers are sanitized after each use with a computer application.

    The October hearing also included testimony from the developer of the Smart Communications mail scanning system, who had traveled from Seattle to attend the hearing. Tuomey asked him how secure the data is that's scanned into the jail cart and stored on Smart servers. He said data was encrypted with software similar to financial transaction applications.

    The testimony from potentially seven witnesses took too long for them to finish, so Abdoney set another hearing for 9 a.m. on Jan. 9, when he could rule on the motions. More witnesses, including the deputy who oversees the mail scanning cart for the Sheriff’s Office, are expected to be called when the hearing continues.

    Similar policies elsewhere

    The Polk County lockup is not unlike Florida Department of Corrections prisons that have banned state prisoners from receiving any “tangible routine mail at all 128 of its facilities,” as reported by Prison Legal News in its September edition.

    The FDC policy began in January 2022 at several facilities, and now all prisons statewide deliver electronic copies of inmates’ mail on tablets they can checkout. A spokesman with the FDOC did not respond to further questions about the mail scanners in state prisons.

    In an email to a Ledger reporter, an FBI spokeswoman said she was prohibited by Department of Justice guidelines from denying nor confirming its agents had visited the Frostproof jail for an investigation involving the facility. The DOJ could not be reached for comment.

    In Pennsylvania, its state prisons had contracted with Smart Communications for $16 million for its mail scanners. The prison bureau was trying to eliminate drug exposure of its staff but changed its policy in April, according to a Philadelphia Inquirer report. In that case, an emergency injunction had been filed in federal court to stop what attorneys called a lack of access to the courts by inmates.

    The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections agreed to eventually "revert to some variation on the previous system, which did not involve photocopying and relied on individual attorney-identification numbers to track legal mail," the Inquirer report said.

    According to David C. Fathi, director of the ACLU National Prison Project, "There certainly are cases that hold that the confidentiality of attorney-client communications is sacrosanct. It is entitled to the highest level of confidentiality and protection and so any jail policies or practices that threaten that confidentiality are subject to very certain scrutiny."

    https://www.theledger.com/story/news...s/71933845007/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

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