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Thread: Jason Lee Wheeler - Florida

  1. #11
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
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    Condemned man convicted of murdering Lake sheriff's deputy seeks life sentence in new trial

    Frank Stanfield
    The Daily Commercial

    TAVARES — The man who ambushed three Lake County Sheriff's Office deputies in 2005, killing one and wounding two others, is back in court this week trying to get his death sentence overturned.

    A jury in 2006 recommended 10-2 that Jason Wheeler be put to death for killing Wayne Koester and injuring Thomas McKane and Bill Crotty, but thanks to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that a jury must now be unanimous in a death recommendation, he gets a chance for a life sentence.

    Jury selection is scheduled to begin Monday. The penalty phase trial is expected to last about three weeks, prosecutors said.

    Shoot me! Shoot me!'

    Nothing is routine in law enforcement, certainly not a potentially explosive domestic violence call.

    But no one was expecting a terrifying, deadly shootout on Feb. 9, 2005, a massive manhunt and a fugitive ending up paralyzed and in a wheelchair after being shot by another deputy. No one perhaps, except Wheeler’s live-in girlfriend, Sarah Heckerman.

    “I need an officer to come — well, not my house, down the street from my house, because my old man’s lost it and he’s promised me that if a cop pulls up in my driveway it’s going to be a gun battle… he’s very violent, so I’m telling you this because I’m worried about everybody," she said in a 911 call. "He’s asleep, but he’s as big as a house.”

    She said he had hog-tied and assaulted her the day before.

    Deputies arrived at the Lake Kathryn property in Lake Kathryn Heights in three separate patrol cars. Crotty had picked up Heckerman in his vehicle. They saw the RV the couple was living in with their children and the mobile home wrecked by a hurricane that Wheeler was trying to renovate, but they did not see Wheeler.

    After looking around, they began putting up crime scene tape.

    “I could hear something behind me sounding like a shotgun racking, and there was some commotion and then there was a blast from behind me,” McKane said in a sworn statement.

    “I turned around just in time to see the dust and debris coming out of the end of the shotgun in my direction.”

    McKane and Koester ran for cover.

    “I saw Deputy Koester running up the driveway,” Crotty said in his statement. “Deputy Koester had a gunshot wound to the face. It looked like bird shot. His face was bleeding. He tripped coming up the driveway. I thought he was going to fall.”

    Wheeler shot Koester three times. Koester, who lost his handgun in the battle, ran to his patrol car to grab a shotgun, but Wheeler shot him in the head with the fatal shot.

    Crotty fired his weapon. He and Heckerman took cover behind a car. Wheeler then chased him around the car, riddling the car with shotgun pellets. Heckerman dove for cover under the car.

    “I yelled at him,” Crotty said. “I said, ‘Jason, what the hell are you doing?’ He said, ‘I’m going to [expletive] kill you, man.”

    Crotty, who was shot in the leg, tried to shoot Wheeler’s legs out from under him by firing under the car.

    McKane ran into the open and began firing at Wheeler, who escaped on a dirt bike, but not before shooting McKane in the leg. Wheeler also suffered a gunshot wound, according to court records.

    Hundreds of law enforcement officers showed up to hunt for Wheeler, including the Florida Highway Patrol, officers from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, Volusia County Sheriff's Office and the Marion County Sheriff’s Office.

    The latter didn’t need any extra motivation. They lost of one of their own deputies, Brian Litz, to a mentally ill shooter almost exactly a year earlier.

    Lawmen tracked Wheeler to an island on nearby Blue Lake.

    “He was adamantly screaming to us, ‘Shoot me! Shoot me!’” LCSO Cpl. Joseph Schlabach would later testify.

    When it appeared that Wheeler reached for his shotgun, the deputy shot him. One shot passed through both legs, one struck his abdomen, and one went into his left buttock.

    Wheeler was taken to Orlando Regional Medical Center where he told a deputy he had wanted to go out “in a blaze of glory.”

    The Florida Supreme Court in its review of the case said, “Wheeler had a speaker wire wrapped around his neck and repeated to another officer that he tried to kill himself. A shotgun, which proved to be the murder weapon, was found nearby."

    'Wayne will never be back'

    The initial trial was grueling, especially the penalty phase. Crotty and McKane recalled the horror on the stand. Jurors could hear the raw emotion on the taped radio calls, including one of the deputies shouting, “I’ve been shot.”

    Koester, who had been a longtime, beloved member of the Umatilla Police Department, had children with his first wife and stepchildren with his wife of two years.

    Prosecutors displayed more: than 50 photographs of Koester at family events, as a Little League coach and as a National Guardsman.

    “Wayne will never be back. There will never be no more football games. No daddy to walk my daughter down the aisle," said Virginia Bevirt, his ex-wife.

    Wheeler’s friends, family and pastor said Wheeler was under a lot of stress, had lost his job after the hurricane, was taking methamphetamines and blamed Heckerman for not taking care of the children and destroying the work he had done on the mobile home.

    His family wasn’t 100% on his side.

    “Wheeler’s aunt testified on cross-examination that she had told police after the murder that several years prior to the incident, Wheeler said that Heckerman would call the police one day and, when they came and started shooting at him, he would take down as many as he could before they got him,” the Supreme Court opinion stated.

    Wheeler was found guilty of first-degree murder of a law enforcement officer, two counts of attempted first-degree murder and two counts of aggravated battery of law enforcement officers.

    Circuit Judge T. Michael Johnson, acting on the jury’s recommendation, ruled that the state proved the death penalty aggravator of cold, calculated and premeditated murder, and that Wheeler acted to avoid arrest.

    Johnson also gave weight to the aggravator that Wheeler had previously been convicted of a violent felony, “based on his convictions of the contemporaneous violent felonies involving the other victims in this case,” the justices noted in their opinion.

    Johnson gave some weight to the statutory mitigator that he was “under the influence of extreme and emotional disturbance,” and that his “capacity to conform his conduct to the requirements of law was substantially impaired."

    In the end, the aggravating circumstances outweighed the mitigators, Johnson said.

    Johnson, who spent much of career as a public defender trying to keep clients off death row, said: “This court regretfully sentences you to death in the manner provided by law.”

    He also sentenced him to four life sentences.

    The state's highest court upheld the conviction and penalty. The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on unanimous jury penalty recommendations 10 years after the trial is what brings Wheeler and others back for new sentencing hearings.

    https://www.dailycommercial.com/stor...l/10241425002/
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  2. #12
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Jurors split on death penalty, life in prison for man convicted of killing deputy

    By EMEA Tribune

    A jury handed down a death penalty recommendation for Jason Wheeler back in 2006, a year after he killed deputy Wayne Koester.

    However, two jurors decided that Wheeler should serve a life sentence instead.

    The problem stems from a 2016 state Supreme Court ruling that states someone can only be sentenced to death if the jury reaches that decision unanimously. State lawmakers made that a part of state law the very next year.

    The victim’s widow expressed relief after sentencing wrapped up all those years ago. But now, the case is back in the court system.

    The defense told jurors that Wheeler is a changed man who found religion and that no matter what, he will die in prison.

    https://emeatribune.com/jurors-split...illing-deputy/
    "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."
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    - 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.”
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  3. #13
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
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    I’ve lost more faith in Florida.
    Thank you for the adventure - Axol

    Tried so hard and got so far, but in the end it doesn’t even matter - Linkin Park

    Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever. - Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt

    I’m going to the ghost McDonalds - Garcello

  4. #14
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    At retrial, Lake County jury chooses life sentence for man who killed deputy in 2005

    By Frank Stanfield
    The Daily Commercial

    Jurors on Wednesday voted to reject the death penalty imposed on Jason Wheeler, who shot and killed sheriff’s Deputy Wayne Koester in 2005 and injured two others in an ambush.

    He had been sentenced to death in his original trial, but the jury vote was 10-2. A U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2016 now demands recommendations must be unanimous.

    He will now serve the rest of his life in prison without parole. He was shot and paralyzed while being captured, so he must use a wheelchair.

    Koester’s widow, Ashley, wept when the verdict was read, and declined to make a statement to the Daily Commercial.

    Two kinds of scars

    Jurors heard about two kinds of scars Friday: the physical and the mental. The resentencing hearing was hard to bear for family and undoubtedly on the two deputies who survived: Lt. Tom McKane and retired Deputy Bill Crotty.

    Koester was shot five times by the killer’s shotgun, “90- some-odd pellets,” many of the smaller birdshot variety, that at the very least felt like “wasp stings.”

    The exception was a very painful lung injury caused by larger buckshot pellets, a medical examiner testified. Two other Lake County sheriff’s deputies were wounded.

    Meanwhile, the mental trauma continues for Koester’s family.

    “Parenting two kids who lost their father tragically was not easy,” said Virginia Bevirt, Koester’s first wife, in her prepared victim impact statement.

    “Always overcompensating to fill that loss, that void. Not wanting to let them down. Yeah, I gave in a lot. It was never enough. Nothing could fill their father’s loss, not even me. I had to watch my children being known as Wayne Koester’s kids, never just Amber and Ryan.

    "There was always that dark cloud hanging over their heads, preventing them from [reaching] their full potential. They just couldn’t have a normal kid’s life with both parents …. They have been reminded of their father’s death every day for the last 17 years with no peace and no closure. I fear they will never be able to heal from their father’s loss.”

    Koester’s sister, Paula Cassella, helped raise him when she was 13 when their mother died, so they were especially close.

    “Wayne did not get to see any of them graduate from high school or college, or even see our oldest daughter, the one that was so close to him, become a nurse practitioner,” she said.

    The children describe their loss

    His daughter, Amber Koester, said her dad had a “huge heart.”

    “He was a husband, father, son, brother, officer, and National Guardsman. He dedicated his life to being there for anyone who may have needed him. He spent his days coaching boys’ football, helping me with my cheers, practicing my flute, trying to prank us kids, or enjoying his football games. He meant a lot to the whole community. I’ve come to think that in his last moments, he died trying to fight and live for all of us. The world didn’t deserve losing such a kind soul,” she said.

    Ryan Koester was 11 when he lost his dad. He emulated his father’s military service by joining the Army. “I hoped he would be proud of me. I’ll never know,” he said.

    Ashley Koester, could not stand the strain of reading her statement, so she had a sheriff’s deputy read it. She wrote that she was, “…not really understanding why the hand I placed his wedding ring on was so cold, or why there was a towel covering his face, or hearing the sound of my own my screams when they told me he was gone.

    “I have to live like this, accept this horror over and over again, knowing he would not be coming home. I wake up at night hoping that it was nothing but a horrible dream, but reality always sinks in and punches me in the gut. We lost Wayne forever.”

    The defense approach

    Defense attorneys in general abhor victim impact statements. Jurors are instructed not to consider them as evidence when weighting aggravating versus mitigating evidence, and yet they are allowed to hear the emotional testimony.

    Wheeler’s attorneys fought to reduce the number of photographs that accompanied the statements. The original trial included 54 showing Koester in various settings, including with family, or the former Umatilla police officer as a child.

    The Florida Supreme Court noted the defense objections but ruled there was no specific number that pushed the case over the top.

    Circuit Judge James Baxley eventually reduced the total number of photos, but Koester was still depicted in various stages of his life.

    Dr. Steven Cogswell performed the autopsy on Koester following the Feb. 9 attack in the Paisley area.

    At one point, he used a mannequin to show jurors where each gunshot wound was and where each shot was fired.

    Deputies Bill Crotty and Tom McKane testified that Wheeler ran after Koester on a dirt driveway shooting him before turning his attention to the others and his wife, Sarah Heckerman, who called the sheriff’s office to report his domestic violence.

    The fatal blast, at close range, hit above his left eye and went through the skull and into the brain cavity. “He was looking at the shotgun,” Cogswell said.

    Wheeler, who appeared glum throughout the trial, continued looking grim as he shook hands with his attorneys.

    “We’re very happy,” said Brunvand Wise. “We believe it’s the right verdict.”

    https://www.dailycommercial.com/stor...r/10348601002/

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