U.S. court upholds life sentence for Spaniard Pablo Ibar

The Florida Court of Appeals has upheld the sentence of life imprisonment for life sentence for Pablo Ibar and has refused to revoke the sentence as requested by the defense of this Hispanic-American citizen, who is serving time in the United States for three murders.

The spokesman for the Pablo Ibar-Fair Trial Association, Andrés Krakenberger, who this week has visited Euskadi together with the father and the defense lawyer of the condemned man to continue gathering support, has informed of this ruling, which he describes as a “devastating blow”. and “a great blow to the family”.

Pablo Ibar, 50 years old, married, father of two children and nephew of the Basque boxer José Manuel Ibar, Urtain, remains. incarcerated in the United States since 1994 and has been tried four times for the deaths of nightclub owner Casimir Sucharski and models Marie Rogers and Sharon Anderson, three crimes he claims he did not commit.

Ibar passed 16 years on death row until 2016 when a court overturned the sentence as the evidence was deemed “too flimsy,” and his death sentence was subsequently replaced with life imprisonment.

Last February 28, the hearing was held in the Fourth District Court of Appeal of Florida in which he requested the revocation of the life sentence and the holding of a new trial, which have now been rejected.

Arguments of the defense

On appeal last February 28, Pablo Ibar’s defense attorney, Joe Nascimento, argued twelve legal grounds to demonstrate. “the errors” that, according to counsel, occurred in the trial for which Ibar dodged the death penalty in exchange for life in prison.

The “insufficient” DNA evidence located on a T-shirt, the lack of a link to the murdered or the “inconsistency of the statement” of a key witness for the prosecution were some of the arguments put forward by Ibar’s defense.

But the Chamber has now dismissed all of the arguments put forward by attorney Nascimento, and has only justified its rejection of one of the defense’s motives. -this court is not required to rule on every argument of the defense, it can simply say that it rejects them, as it has done with all but one of the grounds.

Specifically, it has analyzed one of the twelve grounds, which accused Judge Dennis Bailey, the judge in the last trial, of bias in acting with a juror who reported being pressured by his peers to cast a vote in favor of the conviction and said on social networks that he regretted the conviction.

The regret of a juror

The Court of Appeals has rejected this argument by Ibar’s counsel: “The record in this case reveals that juror simply regretted his verdict.. Mere remorse on the part of a juror is insufficient to justify an intrusion into the jury’s deliberations.”

“There simply was 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 disregard their oaths and instructions,” the ruling stated.

The judges of Florida’s Fourth District Court of Appeal conclude that “there were no alleged tortious acts overt or external influence.”

For the defense, by failing to explain its decision on the other 11 issues with a written opinion, the Court of Appeal has substantially prejudiced Ibar’s ability to seek review by the Florida Supreme Court.

Now, Ibar’s counsel will file a motion asking this Court of Appeal to. reconsider its decision and that it prepare a written opinion addressing all issues, for subsequent appeal to the Florida Supreme Court.

Ibar’s defense has recalled that it was the Florida Supreme Court that overturned the conviction of the other defendant in this case., Seth Peñalver, in 2006, and also overturned Ibar’s prior conviction in 2016 and replaced it with life imprisonment.