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Thread: Slobodan Dragic Gets Life Sentence in 2010 FL Murder of Jelena Dragic

  1. #1
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Slobodan Dragic Gets Life Sentence in 2010 FL Murder of Jelena Dragic


    Slobodan Dragic


    Jelena Dragic


    Fatal shooting in West Palm Beach now a death penalty case

    The state attorney has charged a West Palm Beach-area man with first-degree murder with a firearm, making him eligible for the death penalty.

    Slobodan Dragic is charged with shooting his wife, Jelena Dragic, twice, killing her outside their home on Sept. 30.

    According to court documents, a witness saw Dragic following the victim as she left her house and walked to her car. He was carrying a firearm and shot her outside of their home, then walked over to her body, stood over her and fired another shot into her head, the witness reported.

    The case is being prosecuted by Assistant State Attorney Cheryl Caracuzzo.

    (source: CBS News)

  2. #2
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    February 12, 2014

    Palm Beach County domestic-abuse murder trial opens with defendant sobbing

    By Daphne Duret

    Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

    WEST PALM BEACH — As soon as defense attorney Jennifer Marshall began telling a jury how Slobodan Dragic met his wife, the 49-year-old man bowed his head and dissolved in tears Wednesday, sobbing so deeply his shoulders shook.

    Slobodan and Jelena Dragin knew each other since he was just three years old — they were “this high” as Marshall described it — and throughout his childhood she was the closest person to him outside of his family. He married her when he was 16, and 28 years after that, he was the one who shot the bullets in her head that ended her life.

    Dragic’s attorney called it a temporary moment of passion born from the depths of despair in her opening statement of Dragic’s first-degree murder trial, where testimony began Wednesday. Palm Beach County Chief Assistant State Attorney Adrienne Ellis called it premeditated murder.

    “She filed for divorce, and 13 days later she’s dead,” Ellis said.

    But Marshall said the downward spiral of their relationship was much longer. She said Dragic as a teenager looked to Jelena for solace after his brother died tragically and his mother was hospitalized. And he made great efforts to get his family out of the former Yugoslavia during the Bosnian war.

    Marshall said that after they moved to Florida in 2004, however, the couple had a hard time coping with the fact that their son, Darko, had developed a drug habit and was getting into more and more trouble with the law. On top of that, they were underwater on the mortgages for two homes they purchased before the housing bubble burst, and they struggled to make ends meet.

    Marshall said the couple mutually decided to split. But one morning in September of 2010, Dragic could no longer cope with the end of their union. After he shot Jelena, according to Marshall, Dragic sat in his car and started writing letters, planning to kill himself. Police arrived before he could do it, she said.

    “He never ever had a conscious thought,” Marshall said Monday as Dragic continued sobbing from his seat. “He acted full of despair, fear and anger.”

    Later, it was Dragic’s daughter, Suzana, who cried on the witness stand when prosecutors showed her a picture of her mother from shortly before she died. Suzana Dragic said she recalled helping her father draft a response to her mother’s divorce petition.

    “I told him that whether or not he responds, it will still continue,” she said.

    Suzana has previously accused her father of years of domestic abuse of her mother. Wednesday, she said that on the morning her 47-year-old mother was killed, Suzana noticed something unusual. Before her mother left the house to go to work as a home health aid, her father was already out the door.

    “It was the first time he left the house before her in God knows how long,” Suzana Dragic said.

    Testimony in Dragic’s case is expected to continue today. If convicted of first degree murder, Dragic faces and automatic sentence of life in prison. He could face less time if he’s convicted of a lesser charge of second-degree murder or manslaughter.

    http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/ne...d-of-ki/ndMPt/

  3. #3
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    February 20, 2014

    Man convicted of murdering wife, given life sentence


    By Marc Freeman
    Sun Sentinel

    Slobodan Dragic told detectives he murdered his wife Jelena on the morning of Sept. 30, 2010 outside their home west of West Palm Beach, because he was "finished" with their marital problems.

    But he later pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, leading to an emotion-filled trial in Palm Beach County Circuit Court during the past week that featured the 49-year-old man's sometimes tearful testimony.

    Assistant Public Defenders Jennifer Marshall and Maurissa Jones hoped for a conviction on a lesser charge of second-degree murder or manslaughter, while prosecutors urged the jury to find that Dragic intended to shoot down the mother of his three children.

    After more than four hours of deliberations spread over two days, the 12 jurors on Wednesday delivered a first-degree murder conviction, read to the defendant through a Bosnian interpreter.

    And moments later, Dragic was led out of Circuit Judge Glenn Kelley's courtroom in handcuffs to begin serving a mandatory sentence of life in state prison.

    Chief Assistant State Attorney Adrienne Ellis and prosecutor Alexcia Cox thanked the jury.

    "Finally the family has gotten the justice they deserve," Ellis told reporters. "This provides the much needed closure they have longed for."

    During the trial, Dragic told jurors he was distraught over their son, Darko's, alleged substance abuse problems. But daughter Suzana Dragic later took the witness stand to testify against her father, a former self-employed construction worker.

    http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/201...-life-sentence
    "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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