Update:
VERO BEACH – The 12-person jury came back in less than one hour Tuesday with a unanimous verdict finding Michael David Jones guilty of first-degree premeditated murder, as charged in the Grand Jury’s Aug. 26, 2014 indictment.
Jurors will return on Nov. 13 for the sentencing phase of the proceedings in which they will weigh aggravating and mitigating factors in the crime to decide whether Jones will spend life in prison with no possibility of parole, or if he will be executed under Florida’s death penalty.
Earlier story
VERO BEACH — Attorneys delivered closing arguments and a final state’s rebuttal Tuesday morning as the first-degree murder trial of accused killer Michael David Jones comes to a close.
Jurors will have all of the evidence presented in the case — most of it on a flash drive, images and videos they can view via a laptop computer linked to a monitor screen — inside the jury room with them when Judge Dan Vaughn reads them a set of agreed-upon instruction and sends them to deliberate after they return from a lunch break.
Chief Assistant State Attorney Tom Bakkedahl in his closing remarks urged jurors to consider what he characterized as an overwhelming totality of evidence and to return a just verdict.
Throughout the lengthy jury selection and six-day trial Bakkedahl repeated a mantra of sorts, telling jurors to ask, “What does the law say?” and he referred to that in his closing telling jurors that if they follow the law, they can only return a guilty verdict on the charge of premeditated first-degree murder.
Assistant Public Defender Dorothy Naumann instead presented the jury with other options for verdicts ranging from not guilty to guilty of lesser degrees of murder that she told them would be equally valid.
Naumann described the legal requirements the state would have had to prove for manslaughter, third-degree felony murder, second-degree murder and finally the first-degree murder conviction prosecutors are seeking.
Hoping to evoke what she called a “healthy skepticism” and raise doubt about the state’s case, Naumann pointed out numerous still-unanswered questions at the end of the trial.
The jury returns to court at 1:15 p.m. for instructions on their task by Vaughn. Naumann asked them to take their time and go home to “let this all sink in” Tuesday night if they need to, and for them not to feel rushed to return a verdict.
Should the jury find Jones guilty of first-degree murder they must return in November to sit once again for the sentencing phase to decide if Jones should be sentenced to death, or to life in prison. Should they return a verdict that Jones is guilty of a lesser offense, or not guilty, their service would be concluded and Vaughn would decide Jones’ sentence after hearing testimony from both sides.
