Monroe County State’s Attorney Dennis Ward joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in the county.
There was a successful murder conviction of Preston Brewer a few weeks ago.
Ward said, “There are so many pieces to the puzzle that made that the successful prosecution. About the hardest thing is certainly with the families. They’re still grieving, and even though it was close to three years, this is their day in court, their day for justice and we tried to put together as good a case as we possibly could, and we had a lot of help from the Key West Police Department, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, our medical examiner, who’s just a great, great medical examiner, the guy was fantastic. All the Key West Police Department people that testified were great. Judge Jones always gives everyone a fair trial. The clerks are so important in these cases, and they did an outstanding job. It’s things we couldn’t do without those people. And Colleen Dunne put together a good prosecution, along with my chief assistant, Joe Mansfield, and we convicted Mr. Brewer of first degree murder. It was interesting, because the defense just wanted a first degree murder charge and based everything on premeditation, and we said, no, we want a second in there as well. And when the judge charged, before he charged the jury, he spoke to the defendant said, hey, look, there’s no manslaughter charge on here. Manslaughter is not as much time as first degree murder, which is automatic life in prison, and second degree was a bunch of years, but he said the manslaughter is a lot less years and would you like to have that manslaughter charge in there? And he said, no. He said, you discuss this with your attorney. Yes, yes, we did. Yes, we did. So the jury came back and convicted him on first degree murder, and rightfully so. I mean, what this guy did, ending this poor kid’s life, was tragic and and he deserves every day, every second of what he gets, spending it in the penal system of the state of Florida.”
The defense didn’t put up many witnesses.
Ward said, “I think they were trying for a jury nullification based on premeditation, that there was no premeditation, and their appeals are going to head in that direction. They spent a lot of time on jury instructions and how the jury instructions should read, and what should they contain? So I would imagine that’s where their appellate process is going to go. So we’ll see where that goes. We feel pretty confident in the case we put together and the jury instructions, we worked together with the judge and the defense team to present to the jury. But sometimes these things get overturned. I don’t think it’s going to happen in this case, though.”
The Delmon Washington murder trial started recently.
Ward said, “Actually we’re hoping for the jury to come back with a conviction for second degree murder, rather than the manslaughter charge, which is only 15 years. This is another case that’s three years old and it’s been around for a while. This was just a savage, horrific beating by this guy on his on, again, off, again, girlfriend. The photos and in the videos and the amount of blood in the apartment and on the walls, it’s just a horrific thing. This guy deserves to be in prison for the rest of his life. I think they’re underway as we speak. They’ll do closing arguments, and the judge will charge the jurors.”
It looks like the defense will try to show the lack of evidence in this case.
Ward said, “Two go in, one comes out. There’s some video of a table and the leg from a table, and there’s a lot of physical evidence, some that wasn’t tested, but I think that with the testimony of the medical examiner and the crime lab technician and a couple of family members that showed the guy was in an agitated state. But he wasn’t really agitated at her, but when they got home, things just went sour there. I think the defense’s theory is that it’s self defense, which a beating like that and strangulation really doesn’t add up to self defense, in my opinion, and actually telling the jury that, well, no one knows what took place in that apartment. We said, well, there’s two people that know. I mean, one’s dead and the other one’s sitting there at the defense table, but they didn’t put anybody on, the defendant didn’t take the stand. So, we submitted a lot of evidence to the jurors, and it’s uncontroverted evidence, just the defense basically getting up, well, you can’t say you don’t know for a fact that my client did this. So is it circumstantial in nature? Sure, a lot of it is.”
What about the issues the country is facing with illegal immigrants?
Ward said, “Well, it led to the death of two people in Minnesota. I mean, the lack of cooperation between that clown that’s governor up there. I mean, you saw him on the national stage dancing around when he could have been the Vice President of the United States of America. Imagine that. But you’ve got that clown and the mayor there in Minneapolis, and I feel bad for the police chief, because as law enforcement officers, I was a municipal law enforcement officer. We worked together with the county law enforcement officers, the state law enforcement officers and federal law enforcement officers. That’s what makes the thing work, the cooperation between the agencies and you had a rogue governor up there, who’s currently under investigation for the theft of $9 billion that went into that state. That’s American taxpayer dollars. That’s not Minnesota taxpayer dollars exclusively. It’s tax dollars from people down here, people all over the country, and as stewards of that money, they certainly dropped the ball. So this guy is certainly under investigation for that. So when you get an opportunity to embarrass the federal government, and they can’t embarrass Trump on anything else, so here’s the one thing. To condone having illegal aliens living in your state, a number of which are criminals and have been convicted of crimes and are in our jails in Minnesota and municipal jails and county jails, and once they get done serving their time, they just let them back into the public to prey on American citizens again and all because you’re worried about your investigation, all because you want to discredit the Trump administration. I mean, it’s terrible, what they’re doing. They created the problem, but they don’t want to take responsibility for it.”
The operations ICE has been involved in have brought about thousands of arrests and convictions.
Ward said, “Imagine how easy it would be just to turn these people over to the immigration authorities at the end of their sentence, or even make a deal with the prosecutors to deport them and get rid of them, send them back to their countries, rather than letting them out and these people are going to find a place to live, go to a house, live in a car, and the immigration officers, they have to go to the house, and they have to get into the house, and they have to bring these people out, and there’s kids and there’s family and all kinds of people involved. So that creates problems, but you know what? That’s intentional on the part of tampon Tim, that’s intentional on mayor Small Fry. Those guys are there just to make Trump have a difficult time and get negative publicity. And now you’ve got the clown in New York that the only reason she’s governor is because the one before her left in disgrace, and the clown in New York City. I mean, who do you run against? One indicted guy, one guy that was a disgrace in office for his behavior with members of the opposite sex. I mean, please, find somebody to run against these clowns. Just the disservice to your citizens and one of your, if not the primary responsibility you have as an elected official is the safety of the people in your communities that you represent. And this guy just abandoned all these things. And the state of Minnesota is going to prosecute those federal officers that were involved in those shootings? How would you like to have a jury of your peers up there? Those guys are gonna get railroaded. You watch and see. They’ll be in the Minneapolis state prison system probably three years from now.”