Over the past year, Stephen Monroe and Derius Bauer have seen all their co-defendants in murder trials take pleas and agree to long prison sentences or, in Bauer’s co-defendant’s case, get convicted at trial and sentenced to life in prison.
Bauer and Monroe are both up for capital murder charges stemming from unrelated killings. If they’re convicted at trial, they would face mandatory life prison terms without parole. Neither wants to deal. Today, their trials were scheduled: February 10 for Monroe, sometime in May for Bauer.
Bauer, 29, is charged in the murder of Deon Jenkins, who was gunned down at a Palm Coast Parkway gas station in 2019. He’s also charged with the attempted second degree murder of Shakir Terry, who had been in the car with Jenkins that night. Terry was severely injured but survived (and testified at Chamblin’s trial).
Bauer didn’t fire the AK-47-like assault rifle that killed Jenkins. He wasn’t even at the scene just then. Marcus Chamblin, now serving life in prison, was the trigger man. But as prosecutors reconstructed the killing at Chamblin’s trial, they showed Bauer allegedly luring Jenkins to the gas station moments before, and speaking with him outside the store before Jenkins went back to his car. Bauer was also allegedly the driver who dropped off Chamblin before the shooting and picked him up afterward.
Prosecutors had hoped Bauer would snitch against his friend. He didn’t. Chamblin was convicted anyway, on the strength of surveillance video, texts, pictures and others’ testimonies, which the state will use again against Bauer, though Bauer’s distance from the gun, and lack of proof (so far) that Bauer was aware that Chamblin intended to murder Jenkins, may yet play in his favor.
Neither Bauer nor Monroe have had steady representation. Their cases illustrate the difficulties and inherent complications of court-appointed lawyers when, either because of heavy caseloads, conflicts of interest or at times incompatibility with the defendant, the relationship doesn’t stick. The defense inevitably suffers as it does not when the accused can afford private representation (though sometimes even that doesn’t stick, especially when bills don’t get paid).
Bauer’s first public defender, Brian Smith, withdrew due to a conflict of interest. The attorney the court appointed instead had already represented a witness in the case, so he had to withdraw. Ann Finnell represented Bauer for a while, but Bauer demanded someone else after what Finnell described as “an unreconcilable conflict.” Wayne Henderson was appointed, then withdrew. Anne Marie Gennusa was appointed in January 2022, withdrew in May 2023, and Henderson was again appointed, only for Reginald Sessions to end up representing Bauer–and withdrawing 15 months later. A judge’s August 21 order yet again appointed Henderson, who appears to be the attorney of record.
Clearly, he’d been struggling. “Everything’s on track? You’re doing everything you need to be doing, sir?” Circuit Judge Dawn Nichols–who has herself just taken over the docket from the retired Judge Terence Perkins–asked Henderson.
“I’m doing as much as I can do,” Henderson said. “It’s quite several boxes of papers to go through. I’m talking to Mr. Bauer, not as frequently as I like, but we have been meeting, and we are conversing, and trying to prepare the case as best I can for his defense.”
Not exactly the most bracing words a defendant facing life in prison wants to hear. Bauer listened, said nothing. He’s due in court again on Feb. 5 for an 8:30 a.m. status hearing.
Stephen Monroe was one of four men at the center of the killing of 16-year-old Noah Smith in January 2022. Smith was a bystander to a fusillade involving the four men. The others were Devandre Williams, Tyrese Patterson and Terrell Sampson. Monroe, Williams and Patterson were in a car together, facing Sampson at the other end of a street, when the two sides opened fire on each other.
In September, Williams, 20, was sentenced to 55 years in prison for the killings of Smith and Keymarion Hall in another shooting, pleading down from what could have been two life terms had he been found guilty at trial. Bullets from his gun also wounded Nysean Giddens. Patterson pleaded out in July. He faces up to 50 years in prison. He’s had several sentencing hearings scheduled and canceled. The prosecution may be weighing to what extent he would be helpful, if at all, as a state’s witness in the case against Monroe, thus potentially lessening his sentence. Terrell Sampson was sentenced to 12 years last August.
That leaves Monroe.
Monroe’s defense attorney, for now anyway, is is Fort Lauderdale-based Terence Lenamon. Lenamon is the sixth attorney to have represented Monroe. Then-Assistant Public Defender Regina Nunally had been originally appointed to defend him. She withdrew because of a conflict of interest. James Dickey was appointed, only to withdraw in June 2022 because he was representing a co-defendant. David Ferguson was appointed. He withdrew weeks later. Kurt Teifke was appointed. He put in substantial work, including sitting through numerous depositions.
He withdrew in July 2024, because he not only knew one of the witnesses on the state’s witness list, but had a prior attorney-client relationship with him–a client who had information about the chain-of-custody of the murder weapon in the case, and who was “privy to statements purportedly made by” Monroe regarding the gun, according to Teifke’s motion to withdraw. A family member of the witness was also a close friend of Teifke’s. Tania Alavi replaced him, and withdrew last July, citing a heavy case load.
Lenamon has filed two motions since–to keep out of hearing of the jury any mention of Monroe’s involvement with gangs, pictures and videos disseminated on social media and showing him holding weapons and money, his probation status at the time of the killing, and his “presence during the purchase of a firearm prior to this homicide.” Nichols, the judge, will hear the motion th Friday before the trial. Unlike Perkins, she Nichols does not like to hear pre-trial motions the day the trial starts.
The other motion was to ask the court to authorize payment of the costs of transcription of 13 depositions by eight witnesses.
Monroe and Bauer have both been at the county jail on no bond since their original bookings–Jan. 8, 2021 for Bauer, who is 30, and May 19, 2022 for Monroe. Should they be convicted and sentenced to prison time, the time they’re accruing at the jail will be credited as time served, though it may be irrelevant if they end up with life terms.
john says
Do the crime pay the time.