More than nine years after he murdered Zuheili Roman Rosado, the mother of six, at a Palm Coast convenience store, Joseph Bova II this afternoon pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Again. Bova is 34.
If the cold-blooded, execution-style murder of Rosado at the State Road 100 Mobil gas station on a February night in 2013 shattered the lives of her six children, the following years would have the effect of repeating the crime by different means as Bova, at times of his own doing, most times not, meandered in and out of the court’s docket as he was twice found incompetent to proceed to trial.
“This has bene ongoing for a while now, the family to this day is still processing or trying to grieve in different ways,” Rosado’s 25-year-old daughter, the oldest, told the court today. “The most appropriate that we feel would be life. We got our mother taken away from us at an early age. I think at any age, it is detrimental. We’re struggling very much with depression now. We’re in and out of therapy, psychologists, you know, trying to go through the grieving process. It realistically seems like it’s like never ending for us.”
The first trial in 2019 was supposed to put an end to it. It did not. The first conviction was by a jury in September 2019, which took 39 minutes to find him guilty, followed by Circuit Judge Terence Perkins’s life sentence.
Bova had sought to represent himself before that trial. Perkins didn’t allow it, ruling that it would be against Bova’s self-interest. Bova was clearly delusional, seeking to represent himself only so he could ask one particular question to a psychologist–“am I insane?” (Bova wanted to be found not guilty by reason of insanity.) Perkins told him what lawyers had already made clear to Bova: the psychologist would not say that. The psychologist could not perjure himself. His findings were clear. Bova was competent then, and at the time of the murder (though Bova said he killed Rosado to save Flagler County).
The trial proceeded to its foregone conclusion. Apparently without Bova’s knowledge–at least according to what Bova told the court–his public defenders appealed, arguing that he should have been allowed to represent himself. The Fifth District Court of Appeal agreed and ordered a new trial.
Bova then stunned the court by insisting he didn’t want it. He didn’t seem to want to be bothered away from his bunk anymore: he reportedly spends his days and nights staring at the wall. So the prosecution and Bova agreed to a plea rather than a new trial. Bova would plead to 45 years to life, and leave it up to Perkins to decide what the sentence would be.
That’s what today’s 40-minute hearing was about. That’s all it took for the conclusion that seemed apparent even in 2013, when Bova was arrested, the conclusion that was reaffirmed at various steps in the case, even by a Bova guilty plea he scrawled on a letter in 2018, and the conclusion of his first trial, to be reached.
Perkins beforehand went through a long list of questions for Bova, ensuring that he understood the case, the pitfalls and limitations of Bova representing himself, to be sure he could represent himself–and to ensure that the case wouldn’t have grounds for appeal again, at least on the judge’s handling of it. (Bova can still appeal on other grounds, for instance of he wants to appeal the severity of the sentence.)
“I’m familiar with your mental health history,” the judge told him. “Are you taking your medication?” Bova mumbled an answer, prompting another question: “Do you feel competent today?”
“Yes,” Bova said.
The judge asked him whether he thought that if he allowed lawyers to represent him, some harm would come to them. Bova said no. It wasn’t an odd question: in a court appearance several years ago, Bova claimed all sorts of harm and threats that would come to him and other officers of the court if proceedings continued.
The judge approached the question of self-representation every which way. “I can’t talk you out of that?” Perkins asked. Bova, calm, respectful, direct, seemingly on his medications, said no. The judge conceded.
Josh Mosley, his attorney, clasped his laptop, and with another attorney assisting in the case, stepped away from the podium, from Bova, from the case. The black cloud that the case had represented for Mosley all these years m might as well have vanished then and there. But the attorneys only stepped a few feet away. Either out of curiosity or obligation, or out of intimate knowledge of Bova’s unpredictability–there was always the chance he would call for attorneys again–they stayed.
Perkins and Bova had a bit of a verbal wrestling match as Perkins insisted that the defendant read his own plea agreement. Bova didn’t want to. Perkins insisted. Bova gave in. Uncharacteristically, it was the only ruffle of the hearing.
“I understand, thank you very much,” Bova said of the plea.
“Do you feel like you know what we’re doing here today, do you understand the consequences of the plea you’re going to be entering?” the judge asked him. Bova said he did.
Assistant State Attorney Jason Lewis had no new evidence to present, but three of Rosado’s children addressed the court by zoom, illustrating to what extent the nine years of Bova’s case compounded the harm of the crime on the family
The oldest daughter said she and her family have conversations all the time about the matter. The family’s fear, she said, is that he would get “anything less” than the original life sentence.
Rosado’s third-oldest daughter also addressed the court. She described how every unexpected turn in the case is like 10 steps back for the family, preventing it from being at peace. A third child, the second-oldest, broke down in tears, describing her state of mind. “I am not mentally stable, I am trying to work and figure out life at this point. It’s been difficult, but here I am,” she said. “He killed my mom, or murdered my mom in cold blood. I think that that deserves life in prison. That’s the least that they can do.”
Bova never looked at the zoom screen just above his head. He declined to present any evidence or make any statements. The judge pronounced sentence.
“I find that the appropriate sentence is going to be life in prison, sir,” Perkins said, with a minimum mandatory of life as well, a technicality that had to be spoken but has no bearing on the sentence as Bova will serve it. Bova did not react. He complied with bailiffs’ directions to get his fingerprints taken yet again. He was ushered out of the courtroom by a side door he has likely used more than any Flagler County inmate in the last 10 years, and, finally, out of the court’s active docket and the Rosado children’s most anxious dreads.
Robert says
This criminal played the system well and did it for 9 years. He sure fooled everyone and got away with it way too long. A real con artist.
The Geode says
Played the system??? Dude got LIFE. The system played him…
Concerned Citizen says
Let’s not forget. He murdered that woman in cold blood.
I don’t understand why we are supposed to be more sympathetic towards him than the victim and her family.
Pierre Tristam says
To be clear: the last two years’ extension of the case were not Bova’s doing. His attorneys were obligated to appeal, even if the results were ultimately a foregone conclusion. They did so. Bova could have had another trial. Had he wanted to play the system, he’d have done so. He was insistent on ending the process as soon as possible. He was ready to end it weeks ago when he realized he’d won an appeal he did not file. I say this not in sympathy for Bova, whose case I have covered from day one (I was on vacation when the murder took place, wrote the first article about it from my brother’s apartment in London, while we were celebrating his 50th birthday) but to clarify that sometimes the very processes that make the judicial system as good as it is are the processes that cause delays. Better delays than miscarriages, even when the delays at times prolong trauma for some. Put simply, this isn’t just about Bova and the family, but about abiding by judicial rules.
That aside–and this is an entirely different issue that does not implicate the judicial system, but the legislature, that never-failing instrument of inanity and injustice obsessively divorced from the reality on the ground–the case has made it just as clear that the man does not belong in prison. He does not belong in freedom, either. That’s obvious. But if he didn’t fit the definition of insanity when he committed the murder, as ruthless as it was (because it was as ruthless and inexplicable as it was) then there’s no such thing as a credible insanity defense in this state. And of course there isn’t. Florida’s standard for insanity is absurd. It is itself insane. It is designed to contrive a defendant into sanity at the time of trial, which is always possible considering the mountains of psychotropic drugs at the ready, but the law acts as if, at the time of the crime, the insanity in question is irrelevant, when nit is in fact the only time that evidence of insanity matters. Not that Bova’s behavior in the last none years, down to his routine days at the jail, argue for any semblance of sanity. This is not a sane man. This is hardly a man. This is a phenomenon as inexplicable as the murder–the execution–he committed. As much as it was an atrocity, and no one disputes that, it doesn’t follow that his case belonged in court, to be disposed of in the most rational, logical, explicable means we have anywhere. The ultimate irony–the proof–of his insanity was his recurring insistence that he should represent himself even as two–two!–crack attorneys, one of them a wonderful character right out of a Malamud novel anyone should count their blessings to have at their side, did their best to advocate for him.
This is a guess, but I would venture to say that none of those involved in the case, not the defense attorneys, not the prosecutors, not the judges (there’s been a few) would disagree. I don’t think any of them dealt with this case without a substantial measure of distaste for being forced to deal with someone who should not have been in court to start with. Bova’s physical appearance is that very discordance that stared us in the face all those years. For all the admirable ways all sides handled this case, and every side handled it unassailably, none should have been put in that position to start with.
I hope Ray W. weighs in. He better than anyone can address this better than all of us, since Bova was at one point his client.
Tom the Terp says
One of the reasons the USA is going to a SHIT BASKET is because of jackasses like Pierre….PLEASE,
for the sake of us all, move your anti-American ass back to wherever you came from.
Brian says
And I would say the same to your trump humping ass.
C. J. says
So you disagree with Legal representation for this or any murderer? If you could actually read/understand Pierre’s recounting of events, you might find yourself agreeing with much of what he says. This case illustrates the contorted legal system existing in Florida that fails to serve its intended purpose, unless the purpose is actually to have a contorted legal system.
Wow says
Don’t be a racist hater please. Thank you.
Ray W. says
During the deposition phase of the pre-trial process in Mr. Bova’s case, I asked each law enforcement officer a variation on this straightforward question: What do you think was the motive for the murder? All but one of the LEO’s said approximately the same thing: I never could figure out any provable motive and I haven’t heard anyone else comment on a provable motive, though we all tried to figure out why this happened. One investigator surmised, with his preface that his was an unprovable opinion, that it was possible that Mr. Bova had formed animosity towards Ms. Rosado when she walked past him earlier that evening as she walked outside the convenience store to take a short break. Mr. Bova had been in the store part of the gas station earlier that evening to withdraw money from an ATM. The surveillance video did not portray any interaction between the two, but that one investigator considered it possible that something during that passing moment had clicked in Mr. Bova’s mind; he just didn’t know what that something could have been.
I suspect that no one will ever know what the motive was.
Commenters like Robert, who presents himself as one who is as poorly educated as anyone can be on this particular subject matter, will commonly project their beliefs on motive onto others who are accused of committing crimes. Robert is wrong in his expressed belief that Mr. Bova possesses the capacity to play the court system, but he seems secure in his belief that he alone can explain the inner workings of the mind of a severely challenged defendant. FCSO really does have a healthy number of dedicated and experienced investigators. It says a lot that none of the FCSO investigators and deputies could solve the motive, if there every truly was one, for Ms. Rosado’s senseless death.
One of the psychologists involved in examining Mr. Bova suggested that Florida’s McNaughton Rule should be challenged, not least because it had been created in 1843 in response to the murder of a beloved counselor to Queen Victoria. That murderer had been found not guilty by reason of insanity under the rule that existed before the McNaughton Rule was adopted. The psychologist argued that the McNaughton Rule no longer reflected accurately a more modern psychological interpretation of how sanity should be evaluated in a criminal law setting. I began the process of studying how a few other American states addressed the issue, focusing, as I recall, on Connecticut’s statutory scheme, but I did not file a motion on that subject matter.
C. J. says
The basic truth is that an “insane” person may not need or have a reason or motive for the commission of any act of violence or behavior. The law is looking for a sane (or understandable) causal reason for an action, while insanity all too often is exhibited by reaction. Too frequently, this reaction is dangerous to others, property, and to civil society. Humans have instincts that we have come to ignore…if the hair on the back or you neck rises, listen to it.
Concerned Citizen says
Ray W,
We appreciate your insight on this case. We understand you have FAR MORE information and experience than we do. I noticed that when our comments don’t agree with yours you specifically call us out. And keep doing so. Isn’t the point of this forum to allow the public to freely discuss?
It’s OK for us to comment on subject matter educated or not. Not all of us had the illustrious career you had. But neither are we blind to the goings on in this county.
Some of the bonds pleas and sentences I have seen in this county still don’t make sense. And I’m sorry that I don’t share any aympathy for the perp after knowing the victim personally. Whatever his reason he chose to do what he did that night. And she didn’t get to go home. Life without parole seems more than fair.
Ray W. says
The multiple subjects listed in Concerned Citizen’s last paragraph of his comment offer FlaglerLive readers a good range of issues worthy of ponder and reflection.
First, he is right and wrong about bonds and sentences. Bonds are primarily controlled by judicially adopted bond schedules and sentences are primarily controlled by statute. Judicial discretion is often limited by these schedules and statutes. Yes, sometimes the bond amounts and sentences do not appear to be based on sense. One alternative would be to allow lay citizens to impose their own will on the court system, but the chaos that would ensue from applying each individual’s differing opinions to their favorite cases would rapidly undermine the public’s trust in the courts. There are far too many vengeful citizens out there, short on common sense and long on desire to impose cruel and unusual punishments on other people. This is nothing new. Our founding fathers inserted a clause forbidding cruel and unusual sentence into our federal constitution and gave the power to impose sentences to judges, taking away that power from individual citizens. Our founding fathers really did know what they were talking about.
Secondly, there is a difference between sympathy and empathy. I believe that every FlaglerLive reader sympathizes and empathizes with the tragic loss suffered by Ms. Rosado’s children and other loved ones. I suggest that it is human nature to reject any sympathy for Mr. Bova, but empathy is another issue in this setting. Mr. Bova’s schizophrenic state began emerging during his middle teen years (a common age for the emergence of symptoms of schizophrenia), not long after he had suffered traumatic brain injury from being struck by a motorist while riding a dirt bike, resulting in a somewhat lengthy period of coma. Those who argue that Mr. Bova played the court system either have to explain how Mr. Bova began manipulating symptoms of schizophrenia as a young teen in order to use it as a defense a decade or so later or accept that they just don’t know what they are talking about. If the latter scenario provides the more accurate explanation, then those commenters might best be described as talking to hear their head roar.
Concerned Citizen’s third point in his last paragraph, that life without parole seems more than fair, will always be a point worthy of debate. As I have posted before, an 18th century Italian legal philosopher, Cesare Beccaria, introduced to our founding fathers the idea that a sentence one day longer than that necessary to prevent the commission of a crime was cruel and unusual. As I have commonly commented, over the several decades that I prosecuted and defended accused citizens, I have told many a young prosecutor that the most difficult part of their job would be figuring out which defendant would be deterred by 10 days in jail and which defendant would not be deterred by 20 years in prison.
I cannot say that Concerned Citizen is wrong is stating that life without parole might be a fair sentence. Personally, I don’t know what sentence would be enough to deter a severely schizophrenic defendant who can barely be stabilized by extraordinarily high doses of anti-psychotic drugs, and I cannot determine what a fair sentence would be in that setting. Mr. Tristam is certainly not wrong in pointing out that our state’s approach to mental illness in a criminal setting is seriously flawed.
I agree with Concerned Citizen that comments should be designed to prompt other points of view. I am thankful that many commenters find fault, or flaws, with my own comments.
I spent over thirty years zealously advocating my clients’ points of view and I expected opposing counsel to equally zealously advocate on behalf of their own clients’ points of view. Judges often agreed with me and just as often disagreed with me. Sometimes, I was right in my assertions to a court, but opposing counsel was more right. After all, a good argument must give way to a better argument and a bad argument must prevail over a worse argument. Yes, I suppose I have advocated a bad position and won, but only because my bad position was less bad than my opposing counsel’s worse position.
This last point might be the one that so irks Concerned Citizen. Some people are repeat offenders, but our state and federal constitutions presume that all people are innocent until proven guilty. There will always be tension between our constitutional presumption of innocence until one is proven guilty and our innate and very human desire to protect ourselves from possible future criminal activity. I suppose the Concerned Citizen will perceive senseless acts of judicial discretion in the future. I will stick to the presumption of innocence until one is proven guilty of the commission of a crime.
I think it appropriate at this point to repeat the old political joke that I once posted: There is no such thing as a conservative Republican. There is no such thing as a liberal Democrat. The only conservative is a Democrat who has been mugged. The only liberal is a Republican who has been falsely accused of a crime. The rest will race to the center and plant their flag and proclaim that they got there first and that their plan is best and that everyone should vote for them.
As an aside, I cannot disagree with C.J.’s comment. Thank you. That does not mean I completely agree with C.J. on his view that insanity is only reactive, but his points are certainly valid and supportable.
C. J. says
Thank you. The term, reactive, was a reference to a person such as this disturbed individual who does not need provocation or motive as we understand those terms. I have seen explosive or aggressive behavior occur owing to a glance, a touch, any unsuspecting occurrence, and the diagnosis you site supports this. No court will be able to attach motive; our legal system has the unfortunate role now of struggling with these cases, owing to our society abandoning appropriate facilities/hospitals in favor of the prison system. I have been around long enough to suspect that the profit motive is partially responsible for our state of affairs today. The truly unfortunate victim here can bear no blame or causal motive, she need to have done nothing more than lite a cigarette.
Steven N. Gosney says
Well stated, Mr. Ray!
Seriously says
Eye for an eye..insane or not..just an excuse…really??
Concerned Citizen says
My heart hurts for the family.
They were deprived of their mom. Who was doing nothing more than trying to make a living to support them. And was executed in cold blood. Yet all this concern for the perp.
He certainly has more chances than he gave her that night.
Alonzo says
Don’t know why murderes are not killed. Self defense is one thing but just to murder because you can dosent make since to me. This system tell me it is o.k. to kill.
Ray W. says
Alonzo, you are partially correct in your assessment of the law.
Under Florida’s Stand Your Ground statute, which should more appropriately be titled the “Legislatively Sanctioned Premeditated Murder Act”, a shooter must kill his opponent in order to silence his opponent’s voice. If the opponent survives and tells a story that differs from the one told by the shooter, a judge cannot just choose one story over the other story. Instead, the case goes to jurors, who are cast with the duty to find the facts of the case. If the jurors reject the shooter’s story, he can be convicted of attempted murder. If there is only one story to be told, a judge must accept that version and rule that the homicide was lawful.
Steven N. Gosney says
Ray, you know better than that. This is a misrepresentation of the SYG law.
You said: “If the opponent survives and tells a story that differs from the one told by the shooter, a judge cannot just choose one story over the other story. Instead, the case goes to jurors, who are cast with the duty to find the facts of the case.” That is just not true. The judge can disregard the testimony of the accuser as not credible. For a real world case of this happening, check out our attorney John Terhune’s interview with Law of Self Defense author Andrew Branca on youtube here: “LIVE INTERVIEW! Attorney John Terhune On Winning A Self-Defense Immunity Hearing”
Likewise, your statement, “If there is only one story to be told, a judge must accept that version and rule that the homicide was lawful.” is also not correct. The judge can reject a self serving statement of self defense if there is other evidence contradicting that claim.
Ray W. says
When I first reviewed Steve’s response to my comment, I immediately noticed that Steve had agreed with my position when he wrote: “The judge can reject a self-serving statement of self-defense if there is other evidence contradicting that claim.” That has always been my point on this subject matter. Obviously, the best chance for a person seeking the statutorily created remedy commonly referred to as the SYG defense is for that person to kill his opponent, thereby silencing the opponent’s voice. How better to control whether there is evidence contradicting the SYG defense, as Steve points out? How could a judge inerrantly intuit that a claim is self-serving if the opponent’s voice has been silenced? FlaglerLive readers already know there are sites on the internet that offer printed cards that detail what subscribers should say after a claimed SYG shooting incident. The idea that subscribers to those sites have not already and are now continuing to practice and memorize those printed instructions is absurd, regardless of whether the printed instructions truthfully follow what really happened during the confrontation. As my father use to say: “If the truth comes out in a trial, it’s a miracle.”
Clearly, Steve’s position is less good than it could be. I am not saying his point is bad, because it is not. But he seems to have accepted a belief that shooters will tell the truth to responding law enforcement officers. My point is that most, if not all, people learn at a very young age how to place blame on others, and it really isn’t a stretch for me to assert that there are people among us who have already decided that they will recite a memorized statement from a printed card when their long-term future is a stake. Such people are not going around looking for others to kill, but they have already decided what they will say to arriving investigators if such an event comes to pass.
Initially, my thoughts centered on the difference between a zealous advocate and a partisan. A zealous advocate usually carries an obligation to a client or a cause to present multiple aspects of an issue; a partisan has no such obligation. Since I have known Steve for decades, I know that on the issue of Second Amendment rights, he is a partisan, not a zealous advocate. I have long known that there are different types of partisans. Perhaps the most common partisan is the benign voter who votes for a certain political agenda because he has always voted for that agenda. Other types of partisanship might include the fervent partisan, who provides financial support and openly engages in partisan activities. Then, there is the rabid partisan, like the Flagler County political figure who took to the airwaves to talk about beheading Democrats. There might be as many as 50 different types of partisanship. The Steve I know falls in the middle range of partisanship where Second Amendment rights are at issue.
When I began mapping out my reply, however, the zealous advocate vs. partisan angle just didn’t sit right with me, so I decided to wait. In 30 years of practicing law, I have often decided to just wait to see what comes up. Time was my ally. One evening, while reading an article in The Atlantic, I came across a quote written by a former Portuguese minister to Europe, Bruno Macaes:
“[P]erhaps alone among all contemporary civilizations, America regards reality as an enemy to be defeated.”
As I pondered this quote, a World War II joke that I heard in my childhood in the ’60’s came to mind. Three Allied soldiers were travelling in a truck. The Poilu looked out the rear window and rhapsodized that the liberation of Paris had been magnificent. The Tommy looked at a road sign out the side window and informed the others that they were entering Belgium. The GI looked through the windshield and predicted the trio would be in Berlin before Christmas.
Perhaps, I decided, the best way to address Steve’s comment was to focus on Steve’s, and the larger gun community’s, desire to defeat reality. There really are people out there among us who are planning to kill others among us. Many of them will chose, in advance, semi-automatic rifles. Some of them are just waiting for the moment to arise when they can use their guns to kill a claimed assailant. This subset of the overall greater number of planners will dutifully call the police. They will dutifully recite from memory the instructions on the printed card they received after subscribing to the SYG website that promised to help them succeed if they ever had claim that they had to stand their ground (I have already posted about the elderly man who was approached on his property by a steak salesman who parked his truck and walked onto the private property while wearing a work uniform to coldcall in hopes of making a sale. The elderly man reached into his parked truck’s glove box and pulled out a gun and shot the salesman. As the salesman fell to the ground, the elderly man stood over him and fired again, as the dying man raised his hands and asked: Why? His stand your ground defense failed because an employee was still in the truck watching his boss die.
Others populating the larger set of planners will more actively purchase guns and ammunition, body armor and helmets, post plots on the internet, follow manifestos, and meticulously plan for the events to occur. As I have repeatedly commented, when I was a division chief in the state attorney’s office, I repeatedly told new young prosecutors that the most difficult part of their job would be discerning who would never commit another crime after spending 10 days in jail and who would not be rehabilitated after 20 years in prison. There indeed are evil people out there and it is difficult to spot them all. Some of them belong to the gun rights movement and they are just waiting for their moment. To say otherwise is to ignore reality.
So, I decided to wait even longer. I first thought about replying when I read about the Indiana Republican candidate, Andrew Wilhoite, who won a seat on the Clinton Township Board from his jail cell while awaiting trial for murdering his cancer-stricken wife who had just filed for divorce. Then came Buffalo, followed by Uvalde. Already, the most rabid of the partisans among us have retreated to their previously staked positions. We are watching, right now, as multiple sources promote multiple points detailing how everything else except the guns are at fault after so many people were murdered while shopping for groceries and so many more children were murdered in their classroom. That denial has always been, is now, and always will be sacrosanct among the gun rights lobby. We are watching reality being transformed in real time into an enemy to be defeated.
As an aside, on Steve’s first point, all defendants have a rule-based remedy to challenge the sufficiency of the State’s evidence against them prior to trial. In Rule 3.190(c)(4), if a defendant swears under oath that all of the State’s evidence that is relevant to each element of a crime charged against them is true and accurate and, if the State does not traverse the defendant’s statement of the State’s facts, the judge must rule on the evidence presented to her, because the defendant has a right to a ruling on his remedy. If any of the elements of the crime charged are not established by the submitted facts, the charge must be dismissed. If a judge fails to properly dismiss the charge, an appellate court will order the judge to do so. On a motion to suppress, another judicially-created remedy, if a defendant challenges a warrantless search, the State carries the burden of proving that the search was constitutionally valid. If the State fails to meet its burden of proof, a judge must suppress the evidence. If the trial judge fails to do so, an appellate court will order it to do so. Our Evidence Code contains a provision that permits any party to an action to ask that a judge take judicial notice of certain facts. The statute mandates that a judge shall take notice of certain facts and admit them into the record and the judge may take notice of other facts. Likewise, the SYG statute carries a legislatively-created remedy that is available to each person accused of a crime in a SYG situation. When a defendant files a motion seeking immunity from prosecution, the State carries the burden of proof. Thus, when that defendant recites from memory the instructions set out on his printed membership card to the hearing judge, regardless of whether it is the truth or not and, if the State cannot meet its burden of proof to rebut the defendant’s recital, the judge must grant the defendant immunity, because the only evidence in the record will be the defendant’s rote recitation. If the trial judge decides to reject the defendant’s recital, the appellate court will order the trial judge to grant immunity. I have read too many SYG cases where the appellate court did just that, even though the opinions cited to the implausibility of the facts presented to the court by the defendant. The Newtown case in which over 20 cartridge casings from four different guns were found at the scene was one such case. A crowd had surrounded a dying man, preventing police and medical first responders from approaching the dying man. When the man breathed his last, the crowd melted away. The defendant’s version was the only testimony in the record about what happened. The trial judge did not grant the defendant immunity. The appellate court, reciting its misgivings about the quality of the facts in the record, ordered the trial judge to grant the defendant immunity from further prosecution.
Celia M Pugliese says
Just glad at least the court process is over for Zuheili’s children…and as they wanted it! In honor of their Mom.
Willy Boy says
Better to allow guilty to go free rather than risk punishing one innocent person. A wonderful sentiment, but we still execute innocent people, so we are told, and waste a ton of court time on the obviously guilty. Great system if you can afford it.
Curious says
Is someone literally kicking the shit out of Bova before every public hearing?
ASF says
Mr. Bova has had his day in court–in fact, he has had several days in court. Let’s hope the victim’s family can achieve some measure of peace now–although I am sure they will never fully recover from their loss.