Florida Appellate Justices Heard Charlie Adelson's Murder-For-Hire Appeal

Описание: Appellate justices in Florida today heard argument in Charlie Adelson's appeal of his murder and conspiracy convictions in the decade-old murder-for-hire that targeted his former brother-in-law.

Adelson was not present for oral argument before the 1st District Court of Appeal in Tallahassee today (Tuesday, February 3).

His lawyer Michael Ufferman argued Adelson should have been granted a change of venue because of extensive media exposure and juror bias. He cited the fact that 54 of 130 potential jurors said they believed Adelson was guilty.

Another major point of the appeal is that the trial court erred by excluding text messages that the defense claims showed Adelson and co-conspirators communicating "normally" before the murder, which they intended to use to rebut the state's conspiracy theory. The excluded evidence was also meant to bolster Adelson’s primary trial defense: that he was not the mastermind of a murder plot, but rather a victim of "double extortion" by the hitmen.

Assistant Attorney General Robert Charles Lee countered that Adelson waived his claims by accepting the jury and not providing sufficient evidence of media influence.

Judges Lori S. Rowe, Thomas D. Winokur and M. Kemmerly Thomas heard the argument.

A jury in 2023 convicted Adelson of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and solicitation of first-degree murder for hiring hitmen to kill Dan Markel, who was a Florida State University law professor and the ex-husband of Adelson's sister, Wendi.

Hitman Luis Rivera is serving a 19-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to second-degree murder and testifying against hitman Sigfredo Garcia, who fired the fatal shots, as well as the woman who linked Garcia to the victim: Katherine "Katie" Magbanua, who was Garcia's on-again, off-again girlfriend and also was in a relationship with Adelson.

Garcia was convicted in 2019 and Magbanua in 2022. Rivera also testified in Charlie Adelson's trial in 2023, and Adelson was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. His mother, Donna, was convicted in September 2024 and sentenced to life in prison.

Some of today's discussion focused on comparing and contrasting the media attention to Adelson's case to the media attention to another profile Florida criminal case, the case of serial killer Daniel Rolling.

03:39 "You make the argument that this isn't like the 1994 trial of Danny Rolling in 1994 where people would watch Dan Rather or Tom Brokaw. And I think that's right, but wouldn't the affidavits also have shown that maybe consumers curate their media differently."

14:42 "Surely you're not arguing that, now a trial judge has to look to the defendant who's represented by counsel, to say, 'Do you individually accept a jury?'"

16:30 "Your Honor, what they're saying is there could be such intense media influence in a case that we may not even believe what the jurors are saying."

17:19 "Thanks to good defense counsel, good lawyering, they had a couple of posts from that juror and presented him to the trial court, where that juror had said that the parents of Professor Markel should assist in killing Mr. Garcia. And then went further when my client was charged, and said, surprise, surprise. Mr. Adelson is charged, but the worst one is by far the next one."

20:09 "A second juror then said that there would have been a lot of talk about he's a professor at the law school, and revealing a lot of the facts about the case. There was a divorce going on between the professor and the wife, but the two that are far the most concerning are the two jurors that specifically went back, a male and a female, the one with the glasses, and then an older female that went back and told the other jurors, 'He's guilty.'"

23:02 Justice: "Couldn't we have sidestepped some of this speculation if the tape of the jury assembly room had been reviewed and then some content specifics argued?"

24:45 State argument

26:56 "Mr. Adelson, he's entitled to an impartial jury. He's not entitled to an impartial community or city or world."

30:19 "and even the jurors who were interviewed about their exposure to the media sources I just listed, some of them found that those sources were credible, and some of them found that they weren't credible."

39:09 "In this day and age, no media is really local."

49:57 Ufferman begins rebuttal

51:20 "he can take the label of being racist, misogynist, whatever else he doesn't want to take the label of being murderer, and these texts would have helped him show that what the state was arguing is not true"

52:49 "You all know very well that I think defense counsel was ineffective and had a conflict of interest. I'll raise that at another date, should I need to."

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