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Thread: Eugene Wayman McWatters, Jr. - Florida

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    Eugene Wayman McWatters, Jr. - Florida




    Facts of the Crime:

    Eugene McWatters was convicted for the 2004 murders of Jackie Bradley, 43, Christal Wiggins, 29, and Carrie Caughey, 18. In addition to his death sentence, McWatters received three consecutive life sentences for the rape of the three victims.

    McWatters was sentenced to death in Martin County on December 4, 2006.

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    On March 18, 2010, the Florida Supreme Court affirmed McWatters' death sentence on direct appeal.

    Opinion is here:

    http://www.floridasupremecourt.org/d...10/sc07-51.pdf

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    March 19, 2010

    'Salerno Strangler' death sentences upheld

    The Florida Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the 2006 murder convictions and sentences of death against Eugene Wayman McWatters Jr. for the 2004 murders and sexual assaults of 3 Martin County women.

    Dubbed the "Salerno Strangler" by authorities, the high court rejected several of McWatters' appeal arguments, including that his confessions in 2004 were illegally obtained by Martin County Sheriff's Office detectives.

    McWatters had argued he was illegally duped by investigators into making confessions to the rape and murder of Jacqueline Bradley, 43, Christal Wiggins, 29, and Carrie Caughey, 18, who were found between March and June 2004.

    The women were found hidden in outdoor locations near the home where McWatters stayed.

    After the murders, local authorities initially hauled McWatters in and read him his rights on an unrelated charge, but he quickly found himself being grilled about the trio of grisly deaths, which resulted in him making multiple incriminating statements.

    His attorneys argued that sheriff’s investigators properly warned him of his rights to remain silent or have an attorney present, but when they failed to invoke the warning again as the questions turned to the murders, it rendered the previous warning "constitutionally inadequate."

    The state Supreme Court disagreed.

    "He has conceded that he was accurately informed of his rights and that he understood his rights before any questions began,” the justices wrote. “Neither the United States Supreme Court nor any Florida court has set an ‘expiration date' on properly administered Miranda warnings where the defendant does not invoke his rights."

    Of the 5 justices who wrote the unanimous opinion, only Chief Justice Peggy A. Quince specifically addressed how local detectives led McWatters through his confession.

    "I agree with the resolution of this case," Quince wrote, "but wish to express my concern with the tactics the Martin County Sheriff‘s Office employed during its interrogation of McWatters."

    (Source: WPTV News)

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    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    On November 1, 2010, McWatters' certiorari petition was denied by the US Supreme Court.

    http://www.supremecourt.gov/Search.a...es/10-6029.htm

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    Judge orders new trial for Treasure Coast Death Row inmate known as the 'Salerno Strangler'

    The Treasure Coast death row inmate known as the "Salerno Strangler" deserves a new trial in the 2004 murders of 3 women because his lawyers failed to make a meaningful or organized effort to represent him, a judge has ruled.

    The potential new trial for Eugene Wayman McWatters Jr. comes more than 8 years after a jury convicted him in the rapes and murders of 3 Port Salerno-area women and recommended that Circuit Judge Larry Schack sentence him to die. Schack gave McWatters 3 death sentences in 2006.

    McWatters, on death row since, appealed, and in an April hearing before Schack he accused his attorneys Robert Udell and Rusty Akins of poorly representing him.

    Schack issued a scathing 73-page ruling this week that concluded that the lawyers brushed off basic arguments, missed obvious opportunities to challenge key parts of the state's case, and even failed to keep a complete case file in what has become one of the biggest murder cases in the region. Prosecutors have 30 days to appeal to the Florida Supreme Court.

    Though the judge seemed to place most of the blame on the now-disbarred Udell, he said both lawyers gave McWatters a "seriously deficient performance" that resulted in "a re-victimization of family members, a tremendous waste of resources, and a reversal of the defendant's conviction."

    "In fact, there was no meaningful investigation, no meaningful preparation, no meaningful effort put forth, nor was there any apparent strategy," Schack wrote.

    With the ruling, Schack has reopened the murder cases of Jackie Bradley, Christal Wiggins and Carrie Ann Caughey. All were found raped and strangled within 10 weeks of one another in 2004.

    All 3 women were found naked from the waist down and had their shirts pushed up to their necks. Witnesses said Bradley, murdered in March 2004, was last seen with McWatters near a homeless camp, and said McWatters had promised her she could shower at his sister's house.

    Wiggins and McWatters were seen leaving a house party together May 31, 2004, and McWatters was seen trailing behind Caughey on a bicycle the same day. The women were murdered on the same day, but Wiggins' body was discovered after Caughey's in a wooded area across the street from where Caughey was found.

    If prosecutors hope to win the appeal they would have to overcome the laundry list of problems Schack outlined. Among them, Schack said, was that Udell and Akins had 2 investigators apiece working on the case, but there was no record the investigators ever worked together.

    Venus Oleyourrk, who Udell used to find evidence to avoid a death sentence, had no training as an investigator, paralegal or more importantly a mitigation specialist - investigators specifically trained in searching for such evidence. When that investigator moved out of state months before the trial, Udell replaced him with his son, Spencer, who worked the case for a short while before he was arrested himself.

    None of the investigators who testified in the hearing before Schack earlier this year could give specifics on what strategy the defense team had, if any. Oleyourrk said she received no direction from Udell, hadn't looked at Akins' files and never obtained paperwork the Public Defender's Office collected before the case went to the private attorneys.

    The judge also found no clear division of labor between the 2 attorneys. While many 2-member defense teams in death penalty cases divide responsibilities between the guilt and penalty phases, no firm boundaries existed between Udell and Akins, Schack concluded. The judge noted disagreements among them over whether to make legal pleadings most defense attorneys would think of as standard - including a request to block McWatters' confession.

    Even when he filed it, Udell dismissed the appeal as frivolous, a boiler-plate motion. It failed to mention the specific issues with McWatters' confessions - including the fact that McWatters had consumed 12 beers and smoked three or four marijuana joints on the morning he confessed. He told police in each of the murders he had sex with the women, blacked out and awoke to find they were dead.

    When it came time to argue the matter in a pre-trial hearing, the judge wrote, Udell at the last moment passed off his duties to Akins, and left Akins alone in the courtroom to try to convince Schack to throw out the confession. Udell, meanwhile, took a call on his cellphone outside the courtroom, the judge wrote.

    At the time, Udell was also the attorney in the high-profile California case of Cynthia Sommer, accused of poisoning her Marine husband and using his insurance money to get breast implants and pursue a lifestyle of wild parties and sex with multiple partners.

    A jury convicted Sommer, but she too won a new trial by arguing Udell was ineffective. Prosecutors later dropped the charges against her.

    Udell, who also once represented teen-aged killer Nathaniel Brazill, was disbarred in 2009 over allegations that he mishandled legal fees and fraudulently billed a state agency.

    In this case, Schack said, he was puzzled as to why McWatters' defense team failed to even put up a fight on issues that gave prosecutors a heavy advantage. They never challenged the women's causes of death, agreed to merge the three cases and never made an issue to throw out statements McWatters made to detectives before he was read his rights.

    Of the confession, Schack said, they failed to make arguments attributing it to a number of factors, including police coercion, McWatters' potential psychiatric conditions and brain damage.

    (Source: insurancenewsnet.com)
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    ‘Salerno Strangler' back in Martin jail, awaiting new trial

    STUART — Eugene McWatters is at the Martin County Jail after being returned from Florida’s death row to await a new trial for three counts of first-degree murder related to the killing of three women in 2004.

    The transfer Aug. 11 was ordered once prosecutors said they were not appealing Circuit Judge Larry Schack’s order in July that threw out three murder convictions and death sentences he imposed against McWatters following a 2006 jury trial.

    McWatters
    , 36, has spent eight years on death row for the strangulation murders of Jacqueline Bradley, 43; Christal Wiggins, 29; and Carrie Caughey, 18, all of the Port Salerno area.

    For the grisly serial killings, he’d earned the nickname the Salerno Strangler. He’s expected to remain jailed until his trial, which prosecutors say could be a year or more away.

    The state filed papers indicating they will seek the death penalty against McWatters, which a jury in 2006 recommended by a vote of 9-3 after less than three hours of deliberations.

    Assistant State Attorney Ryan Butler said the state decided not to appeal Schack’s ruling that roundly criticized the court-appointed legal representation McWatters received throughout his murder trial.

    He noted the Florida Supreme Court gives judges a great deal of discretion in capital murder cases. So the question on appeal, Butler said, is not whether the trial court exercised discretion soundly, but whether it abused that discretion.

    “That’s a very difficult standard to meet on appeal,” he said.

    Another factor in deciding to seek a new trial is the potential three or four years it could take for the high court to rule on appeal.

    “We believe the victims’ families have suffered enough from this order, and we did not want to prolong that suffering when the result may be the same four years from now,” Butler said. “The defendant can be tried, convicted, and sent where he belongs in less time than the appeal would take.”

    At McWatters’ new trial, he’ll be prosecuted by Chief Assistant State Attorney Tom Bakkedahl and Assistant State Attorneys Steve Gosnell and Erin Kirkwood. Records show McWatters is represented by Thomas Burns, with the office of Regional Conflict Counsel in Fort Pierce. Burns couldn’t be reached for comment.

    McWatters’ has a status conference scheduled before Circuit Judge Elizabeth Metzger Sept. 19.

    Schack, who retires in January, stunned authorities last month with his ruling that railed on McWatters’ defense lawyers’ “deficient” performance and noted new pathology testimony not offered in 2006 that questions findings of medical examiners who told a jury the slain women were sexually assaulted and strangled.

    http://www.tcpalm.com/news/local-new...trial_70828738
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    Senior Member CnCP Legend JLR's Avatar
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    April 10, 2015

    Eugene McWatters, man dubbed Salerno Strangler, sentenced to 3 life terms Pleads no contest to three murders

    A man dubbed the Salerno Strangler has been sentenced to three life terms, according to the Martin County Sheriff's Office.

    Eugene McWatters pleaded no contest to the murders of 3 women, Asst. State Attorney Nita Denton confirmed.

    McWatters, 37, was convicted in 2007 and sentenced to death but a judge overturned his conviction and ordered a new trial, according to the sheriff's office.

    The sheriff's office says before trial was set to begin he asked for a plea deal.

    http://www.wptv.com/news/region-mart...o-3-life-terms

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