He Florida Court of Appeals has confirmed the life sentence for Pablo Ibar and refused to revoke the sentence as requested by the defense of this Hispanic-American citizen, who is serving a sentence in USA for three murders.
The spokesperson for the Pablo Ibar-Fair Trial Association, Andrés Krakenberger, who this week visited the Basque Country with the defendant’s father and lawyer to continue gathering support, reported this decision, which he described as “devastating blow” and “a big blow to the family”.
Pablo Ibar, 50 years old, married, father of two children and nephew of Basque boxer José Manuel Ibar, Urtainhas been imprisoned in the United States since 1994 and has been tried four times for the deaths of Casimir Sucharski, a nightclub owner, and models Marie Rogers and Sharon Anderson, three crimes he says he did not commit.
Ibar spent 16 years on death row until a court overturned the sentence in 2016, considering the evidence “too flimsy”, and his death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
On February 28, the hearing in which he requested the revocation of the life sentence and the holding of a new trial, which has now been denied, was held in the Court of Appeals for the Fourth District of Florida.
THE ARGUMENTS OF THE DEFENSE
In the appeal on February 28, Pablo Ibar’s defense attorney, Joe Nascimento, backed up twelve legal arguments to show the “mistakes” that, according to the lawyer, occurred in the trial where Ibar avoided the death penalty in exchange for spending his life in prison .
The “insufficient” DNA evidence found on a T-shirt, the lack of a link to the murdered or the “inconsistency of the statement” of a key witness because the Prosecutor’s Office is some of the arguments presented by Ibar’s defense.
But The Chamber has now rejected all the arguments presented by lawyer Nascimentoand it only justified its rejection of one of the defense grounds – this court is not obliged to rule on every defense argument, it can only say that it rejects them, as it did on all grounds except one.
Specifically, it examined one of the twelve grounds, in which Judge Dennis Bailey, the magistrate of the last trial, was accused of bias in acting with a juror who alleged that he had been pressured by his peers to vote in favor of judgment and said on social networks that he regretted the sentence.
A JURY’S PUNISHMENT
The Court of Appeals rejected this argument by Ibar’s lawyer: “The record in this case shows that the juror simply regretted his verdict. A juror’s mere regret is not sufficient to justify entry into the jury’s deliberations.”
“There is no evidence to suggest that the juror was influenced by any external factor or that he consented to an agreement among jurors to disregard their oaths and instructions,” the ruling states.
The judges of the Court of Appeals for Florida’s Fourth District concluded that “there were no allegations of manifest wrongdoing or outside influence.”
For the defense, by not explaining its decision on the other 11 issues with a written opinion, the Court of Appeals severely undermined Ibar’s ability to seek review by the Florida Supreme Court.
Ibar’s attorney will now file a motion asking this Court of Appeals to reconsider its decision and prepare a written opinion addressing all issues, so that he can appeal to the Supreme Court of Florida.
Ibar’s defense recalled that the Florida Supreme Court overturned the conviction of another defendant in the case, Seth Peñalver, in 2006, and also overturned Ibar’s earlier conviction in 2016 and replaced it with life imprisonment. imprisonment.
Source: La Verdad
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