Xbox mass murder defense lists State Attorney R.J. Larizza, prosecutors as witnesses
Attorneys for one of the men in the Deltona Xbox mass murder resentencing case have listed new defense witnesses and it’s an unusual lineup: 7th Circuit State Attorney R.J. Larizza along with the prosecutors in the case.
The defense attorneys for Jerone Hunter are also asking Circuit Judge Randell Rowe III to order the State Attorney’s Office to produce records the defense requested on April 24 but has yet to receive. The records in question deal with the use of the new non-unanimous death recommendation law in the resentencing of Hunter and Troy Victorino.
Besides Larizza, the defense attorneys also listed as witnesses Assistant State Attorneys John Reid and Jason Lewis, Heatha Trigones and Andrew Urbanak – all high-ranking prosecutors at the State Attorney’s Office; Trigones and Urbanak are the two prosecuting Victorino and Hunter.
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It wasn't immediately clear why the defense added Larizza and the prosecutors to the witness list.
The resentencing is set to begin again Tuesday at the Volusia County Courthouse in DeLand.
The latest motions are part of the legal battle over prosecutors’ so-far winning effort to apply Florida’s new non-unanimous death-penalty recommendation to the Xbox mass murder resentencing.
Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the new statute, which requires an 8-4 death recommendation from the jury, on April 20, the same day that a 15-member jury was sworn in for the case. The previous law required a unanimous jury recommendation.
The trial judge originally denied the prosecutors' motion to apply the new law. The resentencing hearing was about to enter its third day on April 27 when the 5th District Court of Appeal granted a request by the Attorney General’s Office and prosecutors to stop the resentencing while it considered a request to use the new law.
In a split decision Thursday a three-judge panel of the 5th DCA granted the state’s request to use the new non-unanimous death penalty law.
Defense attorneys have now asked for a rehearing before all the judges at the 5th DCA.
The Xbox mass murder
Victorino, 46, and Hunter, 35, are being resentenced for the 2004 murders in which six people were killed in Deltona.
Victorino and Hunter were sentenced to death in 2006, but those sentences were overturned because the state Supreme Court later ruled that death recommendations must be unanimous. The state Supreme Court subsequently reversed itself and ruled that unanimity was not required.
Two other men convicted in the killings, Michael Salas and Robert Cannon, were sentenced to mandatory life in prison.
The four men used metal baseball bats to beat to death six people: Erin Belanger, 22; Michelle Nathan, 19; Roberto "Tito" Gonzalez, 28; Jonathan Gleason, 17; Francisco "Flaco" Ayo-Roman, 30; and Anthony Vega, 34. A dog was also killed.
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Deltona mass murder defense lists State Attorney, prosecutors as witnesses
