Florida court confirms life sentence for Pablo Ibar

The Florida Court of Appeals upheld the life sentence for Pablo Ibar, Hispanic-American citizen, son of a Cuban mother accused of a triple murder committed in 1994.

The court refused to revoke the life sentence imposed on Ibar and hold a new trial, a decision that the spokesman for the Pablo Ibar-Juicio Justo Association, Andrés Krakenberger, described as a "devastating blow" and "a great blow to the family." .

The hearing took place on February 28 in the Court of Appeals for the Fourth District of Florida.

Pablo Ibar's defense lawyer, Joe Nascimento, spoke about the errors that occurred in the trial held in 2019, in which a The court again found him guilty of the crimes. the owner of a nightclub in Miramar and two models.

As reported WHICH, Nascimento alleged the "insufficient" DNA evidence found on a T-shirt, the lack of link with the three murdered people and the "inconsistency of the statement" of a key witness for the Prosecutor's Office, among other elements, which made a total of 12 .

But the Court ignored all these arguments and only explained its refusal on one of the 12 reasons: in which Judge Dennis Bailey, who acted in the last trial, was accused of bias. In that process, a member of the jury reported having suffered pressure from his colleagues to vote in favor of the sanction against Ibar, and later said on social networks that he regretted it.

According to the Florida court, that case only reveals that the juror simply regretted his verdict, and that is not enough to justify interference in the jury's deliberations.

"There was simply no evidence to suggest that the juror was influenced by any external factors, nor that he had consented to an agreement among the jurors to ignore their oaths and instructions," the resolution states.

"There were no alleged overt harmful acts or external influence," the text adds.

Ibar's lawyer points out that by not ruling on the other 11 issues, the Court of Appeal damages the capacity of his client, who has always defended his innocence, to request a review by the Florida Supreme Court.

Now, Nascimento will present a motion requesting the same court to reconsider its decision and to draft a written resolution responding to the 12 arguments, in order to appeal to the Supreme Court.

In May of last year, the lawyer reported at a press conference on an appeal filed before the Court of Appeals for the Fourth District of Florida against the sentence of Judge Dennis Bailey, of Fort Lauderdale.

Pablo Ibar was accused of the murders of Casimir Sucharsky, a nightclub owner, and models Sharon Anderson and Marie Rogers, on June 26, 1994.

The Spaniard was sentenced to capital punishment in 2000, sanction that was overturned in 2016 by the Florida Supreme Court, which described the evidence as "very weak." Then the judge ordered a repeat of the trial, which took place in 2019, when he was sentenced to life imprisonment.

One of the main arguments of the defense is that in the 2000 trial, Ibar had a public defender who did not do his job well, since he did not request expert facial recognition evidence in relation to a video, of very poor quality, in which the murderer is seen, and which was definitive when it came to condemning the Spaniard.

Another reason he alleges is that the Police influenced a witness, a neighbor of the victims, to identify him.