Miami (EFE).- The Spanish-American Pablo Ibar, imprisoned in the United States since 1994 for three murders of which he pleads innocent and for which he was sentenced to death, requests before an appeals court the revocation of his life sentence imposed in 2019 and the holding of a new trial.
The first oral hearing of the appeal presented by Ibar’s lawyer, Joe Nascimento, was held by videoconference without the presence of the 50-year-old Hispanic-American.
Ibar has spent more than half of his life in prison for the shooting death of Casimir Sucharsky, owner of a nightclub, and the models Sharon Anderson and Marie Rogers, committed on June 26, 1994 at the home of the former in Miramar (Florida ).
Before the three judges of the Court of Appeals for the Fourth District of Florida, based in the city of West Palm Beach (120 km from Miami), Nascimento points out that the judicial process in which Ibar got rid of the death penalty but sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison.
The lawyer, who was the one who led the defense in that jury trial, highlighted that a specific motive was never found that linked Ibar to the three homicides and that throughout the judicial process there was carelessness with the pieces used as evidence.
The shirt with traces of DNA, a key piece
To a question from Judge Melanie May about the most decisive argument to revoke the sentence.
The lawyer referred to the small DNA sample belonging to his client that is on a blue T-shirt found in Sucharsky’s house after the triple murder.
Nascimento mentions an expert who pointed out that the “quality of the sample was below the standards.”
And he stressed that a video recorded by a security camera shows one of the murderers rubbing his face and cleaning his mouth with the shirt, on which his genetic fingerprints were left.
These DNA samples “do not match that of Ibar,” he asserted.
Before May and judges Cory Ciklin and Jeffrey Kuntz, the defense lawyer refers to some of the twelve reasons why he requests the annulment of the sentence.
And he asks that the statement to the Police of the witness Gary Foy in 1994, used by the Prosecutor’s Office to build the case against Ibar, be dismissed.
Nascimento said there were inconsistencies in Foy’s statements, but assistant prosecutor Deborah Koening countered that the witness “had a good chance to see the people” who were fleeing the crime scene on the day of the crime.
The jury of the 2019 trial, which was presided over by Judge Dennis Bailey, “was able to see for himself that the appellant committed those crimes, and this is confirmed by testimony and a DNA sample,” said the prosecutor, who at the same time defended the handling of the DNA samples.
New opportunity for Pablo Ibar
The appeal was registered in court last August, after the judges ordered Nascimento to reduce by almost half the text he had prepared for his request to annul his life sentence and hold a new trial, which would be the fourth for Ibar.
The Spanish-Spanish, nephew of the late Spanish boxer José Manuel Ibar “Urtaín”, was sentenced to death in 2000.
But the Florida Supreme Court annulled that conviction in 2016, considering the evidence against him “very weak” and ordered a repeat trial.
Ibar’s defense alleges in this appeal that the “numerous irregularities and biased decisions incurred by Judge Dennis Bailey” in the 2019 trial violated his “constitutional rights”.
Pablo Ibar, 50, was recently transferred from the Okeechobee penitentiary center (central Florida) to a private jail.
According to the association, Pablo Ibar is in better condition and carries out various activities, at the same time that he has started a welding course.
Tanya Quiñones, Ibar’s wife and mother of his two children, stressed to EFE on Monday that her husband has not lost hope that “the truth will prevail” after almost 30 years and to be able to return to living a normal life with his family.