Transcript of #BecauseMiami: Murder U

All right, ladies and gentlemen, I've received your note indicating that you continue to be deadlocked. And so at this time, I will declare a mistrial and a hung jury.

An agonizing 20-year wait for justice will have to wait a little longer. Jurors in the second-degree murder trial of Rashaun Jones, accused of killing his hurricanes football teammate, Brian Pata, could not come to a unanimous verdict.

I'm even more convinced that he's responsible.

Edwin Pata and his family sat through every day of the trial trial, which stretched into a third week.

For our family, this is one of the hardest things we had to deal with outside of Brian Passing. It just brought everything back.

Pata was shot once in the head, killed in November 2006 outside his apartment complex near Dayland. Jones was not arrested until 15 years later. Miami Huracan's defensive lineman Brian Pata was murdered on November 7, 2006. One gunshot to the head. Short time after practice at the University of Miami campus, he headed back to his apartment in the Kendall area, the Colony Apartments that he shared with defensive tackle Dwyane Hendrix. He was discovered first by his then-girlfriend and then by Hendrix, who, I guess, was coming a little bit later home from practice. The case was obviously a big deal. It was in the midst of a pretty terrible season for the hurricanes. Larry Coker, the head coach, would be fired just a couple of weeks later, and there was a lot of tumult. It was a near losing season. But Brian Pata's stock was on the rise. It was looking like he was going to go probably in the early rounds of the NFL draft in just a matter of months and go from the streets of Miami's little Haiti to becoming a professional football player and a multimillionaire. The case somehow went cold, went nowhere.

Over a decade later, the Miami Dade Homicide Bureau and the Pata family reached out to the press, specifically to try to heat the case and the investigation up again, see if anyone would come forward with any new evidence or information, any new witnesses, to try to jog the public's collective memory about this tragedy. The police police were cooperating for a while with ESPN, who did a real deep dive, a multi-year investigation involving thousands of pages of documents and video and audio. Then a weird thing happened, really. They suddenly stopped cooperating with ESPN. Espn winds up suing them for public records that they refuse to turn over. And suddenly, the detectives had done 180-degree turn. This wasn't a cold case. This wasn't a case where, as one of the detectives said, it could be any number of theories. It could have been anyone. It could have been anything that happened. But suddenly, they're saying this is an open and active investigation. There is an arrest that's imminent, and there is a prime suspect. All of that is the opposite of what they had previously been telling the press on the record. This was all in an effort, apparently, to not have to turn over these public records so that the press could continue to look into this investigation and find that it was woefully inadequate, that the detectives clearly appeared to have Bungled this in the early days, and now over a decade later, it was cold.

Then what happened in August of 2021? Rashaun Jones, who was a defensive back originally from Lake City, Florida, who had been suspended, actually, during the practice on the day of Brian Pata's murder after testing positive for marijuana, which was his third failed drug test. So he was suspended and basically kicked off the team for at least the time being. And he gets arrested. This is in 2021, and he has been in jail ever since because he could not afford the bail, which is how this system works. So now he is still in jail because he was tried by a jury of six of his peers, and they could not come to a verdict. So the jury was hung, and the judge declared a mistrial. We are now being joined by Rashaun Jones's defense team, represented by Christian Maroney, Sarah Alvarez, and Daniel Perez. Guys, starting with you, Christian, is this considered a victory? I mean, he wasn't convicted. I guess he's going to get another day in court. What is your take on the verdict or lack thereof here?

Yeah, I mean, so it's certainly not a victory, right? We wanted to hear a not guilty verdict, and that's the only thing that we would have accepted as victory in this case. But it's also not a loss. He's not been convicted. We get the chance to go to another trial if the state decides to retry it. So it's not a loss, but it's not a win. And we're ready to go again whenever the time comes. Obviously, it's not the best feeling in the world to have a mistrial, but it's not the worst feeling in the world either. Much, much better than the jury having come back with a guilty verdict. So the feeling is somewhere in the middle.

I understand that you did You did not necessarily get to present the defense that you wanted to present. I've been following the trial a bit. Pre-trial, you were trying to introduce some alternate theories of the case. I think it's somewhat remarkable that you got a I don't want to say a positive outcome, but you got the outcome you got despite the fact that you were not allowed to present the defense you wanted to. What were some of the things that you would have presented as a defense had they been admissible? And why weren't they admissible?

Yeah. So we did get to present the defense we wanted, broadly speaking. We argued to the jury that Rashaun Jones was not responsible. The thing that we weren't able to get into and the thing we weren't able to present to the jury were third-party culpability theories. Other people who may have been responsible, other people's names who came up during the investigation that weren't looked into sufficiently, who could have been responsible for this crime. One of them, there's two or three categories of these alternative theories that we wanted to get into. The first had to do with a fight that happened at a club in the summer of 2006. So there was information in the police report, and it seemed like as the police were interviewing witnesses in this case, this is the thing that consistently came up with every person that they spoke to at the beginning of this investigation. And there was a fight that happened at a club between Brian Pata, Willie Williams is another football player. There were another couple of football players from the University of Miami there as well, and then Brian's brother, Fetnal. They were on one side of an altercation, and then on the other side of the altercation were some individuals who were known to be involved in some gang activity.

The West Side Boys Gang was what's named in the reports. Two individuals are named specifically as being involved in that fight and being involved with that gang. This wasn't a normal fight. There were accounts of this fight starting inside the club, making its way outside the club. Somebody got their neck cut with a knife or with a razor. Somebody was hit in the head with a pipe. It was a serious altercation. And then at the end of the fight, one of the two people who were named who were said to be affiliated with this gang, looked over to Brian Pata and Willie Williams in that group and said, We're going to get you. We're coming to get you. And that's where it starts. And Then a few weeks later, Willie Williams, one of the other football players who was involved, reaches out to Brian and says that he heard from three individuals. He names Brandon Ash, is the only full name that he gives. Then he gives two other names, Tony, a first name only, and then a third name, also first name only, and says three people have called him and said that there is a hit out on himself and on Brian Pata as a result of this fight.

Now, some time goes on. There's some accounts and reports that they thought it was squashed, that this hit was taken care of for a period of time. And then sometime in the middle of October, Brian gets a call from Willy Williams as well on the speaker next telephone. And his girlfriend overhears this where Willy Williams says, Hey, man, I thought you said that these hits were taken care of, that we had no further issues, but I'm still hearing from people that there's a hit out on us. And at this point, as far as the report goes, Brian's girlfriend, Jada, says that he gets visibly nervous. He says, I thought I took care of it. I just saw them. There were no problems. And then makes a comment to his girlfriend about how he wants to change his license plate because he's worried about this. This is something he takes seriously. And according to the information from the reports and the information that we got during this case, that was sometime in the middle of October, so about three weeks before the murder. Now, following this, there were two individuals who made confessions. There was one person who made a confession to a confidential informant from ICE, and another individual who made a confession to his cellmate in jail.

Both of these individuals said that they were hired to perform this murder as a hit. It was a hit that they were paid for, which links up with the information that Willie Williams was given that Jada had overheard, that stems back to this fight at the club. One of these individuals, they both specifically named Brian Pata as the person that they were paid to kill. One of them was known to have a 38 caliber handgun that came from the individual who was the confidential informant at ICE. And the firearms analyst, in this case, testified that the projectile taken from Brian Pata was consistent with a 38 caliber projectile. So that's another link. And we learned right before the trial started, because we just got a response from ICE, the day before we were supposed to proceed with opening, responding to a letter that we sent, asking them for a limited deposition about this individual and this confidential informant. And another thing we learned was that the person who confessed, his name was Wilmer Yacinthi, to this confidential informant also told him that he was practicing voodoo. He was doing some voodoo-type rituals at the gravesite and told this confidential informant where he would find these certain items that who are related to these voodoo rituals.

And then the ICE agent went out, looked exactly in the spot where the confidential informant told him these things would be. He finds these things and reports writes it in his report and then tries to get a hold of it.

The ESPN, the original ESPN investigation, opens in a very eerie scene, Brian Pata's mother, and I think his sister, basically digging up the body and moving it to a secret location, in part because these rituals and these artifacts were found in the area with Pata's name, like on a bottle or something. So this all seems consistent with the evidence. It's my understanding, Sarah, that The jury did not hear about any of these alternative theories or alleged confessions. As Chr. Just mentioned, you may have struggled to get some records or information about them. You said on the Eve of trial, you got this information from ICE. Were there any other issues with discovery and attempting to get records? Obviously, ESPN got a bunch of records, and then they stopped getting records. So did you guys have a similar struggle with getting the information you needed and the evidence you needed to go to trial?

I mean, that would be the understatement of the century. So to date, we're still getting new information, and it's not even from the state, the information that we're getting now. It's in connection with public records request, which is ultimately how we had to go about getting the discovery in this case because very little was turned over to us. Just like Christian mentioned, with the whole ICE agent debacle, that came out after the jury had already been sworn, and it was obviously huge, obviously very potentially exculpatory evidence. We weren't able to get into it anyway. But as the defense, we have a right to prepare our defense to use that information to find evidence that could be admissible in court. And throughout, we have been fronted from pursuing those avenues.

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I also understand this case got a little heated. There was some footage that came out of it. It was a recorded trial, if not televised, live, obviously. But there was raised voices between you guys, the prosecution, you guys and the judge. You attempted, I think, on multiple occasions to get the judge removed. Why and what happened with that?

Yeah, so that definitely was not our finest hour in that video, but things had been boiling, coming to a head for a long time. The first time that we tried to get the judge disqualified was after a series of hearings where we felt that not so much the rulings that were actually being made, although we clearly took issue with those as well. But the way in which both sides were being treated, just to say this as diplomatically as possible, it just did not feel like there was a neutral auditor in the courtroom. And so we moved to disqualify. That didn't work out. The second time was because the judge said to Rashaun when she was asking him whether he wanted to accept the state's plea or whether he wanted to make any other offer. And that was pretty significant that he was being essentially asked repeatedly if he would make a plea to the court and she would allow him to potentially plea no contest instead of it make guilt in a murder case, this murder case. This murder case. During that interaction, after he clearly asserted that he wanted to go to trial, he said, Deep in my heart, I know that I'm innocent.

The only thing that I would accept is a dismissal. The judge then said to him, Well, okay, if you roll the dice and you go to trial and you're convicted, the only way that you'll come out is in a pine box. She explicitly said that she would sentence him to life. The problem with that, other than the fact that it's coercive, is that by statute, by Florida law, the mandatory minimum, if you were to be convicted, would be 25 years up to life. And so under the law, a judge isn't supposed to pred determine a sentence before hearing any evidence. Seems reasonable. And so that's what we could get to with. Yeah, due process and such. And such. But that's what we took a issue with, and that was similarly denied.

Danielle, I want to ask you this at trial because we've heard now Christian talk about multiple alternative theories, suspects, alleged confessions. But there was a detective who took the stand who basically said that Rashaun Jones was the only suspect with a motive and the only suspect who owned a 38. As I mentioned earlier, I wanted to get the direct quote from the ESPN investigation that in multiple interviews spanning more than two years, detectives insisted to ESPN that they never had a prime suspect. In fact, Miami Dade, Detective Miguel Dominguez in 2019 said, At the end of the day, it could be anybody. The possibilities are endless. So how do we go from that to a detective testifying that the possibilities aren't endless? This was our prime suspect from day one in 2006, and How did that happen? How could he say that under oath in court, even though the jury didn't hear about it, but that there were potentially other plausible suspects?

I mean, as Christian and Sarah mentioned before, there was many plausible leads. He got up there and he testified that Rashaun Jones, that all roads lead to Rashaun Jones. And I think because Christian did this 6-hour cross-examination, I think he would much better fill in the gaps of the question that you asked.

First of all, it was our position that that opened the door to allow us to now cross-examine and bring out some of these things that had been excluded previously. Obviously, we weren't allowed to do that. We did get a little bit of leeway to point out some faults in the investigation, but we weren't able to get into any specifics or point out any specific individuals who may have had a motive and why they may have had a motive. I think one thing that came out in the detective's testimony was he kept saying that these other leads were excluded. There were no credible leads left. There were no credible leads remaining. But When pressed on what was done to close out these leads, what was done to investigate these leads, he couldn't answer that question for most of the things that we were trying to point out. I think that came across, and I think that is an overarching theme in this case, where the reason we wanted to bring a lot of this stuff out that I mentioned earlier was because there was an investigation done into it. None of these individuals on the other side of this club fight were interviewed.

The individual who had made this confession that was made known to police from the ICE agent, there was no follow-up done. They were just sitting on their heels waiting for ICE to get back to them. There was information that ICE was reaching out to them, trying to give them updates, and they weren't able to get in touch with anybody. The other individual who confessed there was a mistake where they thought he was in custody at the time of the crime, so didn't investigate it. And then they didn't learn that that was a mistake and that he was actually out of custody when the crime occurred until 2022. So after Rashaun has already been arrested and charged. So that's the main thing that we wanted to point out, that there wasn't investigation done into these things. And then there was this conclusory testimony about how none of these were credible. These were excluded by who? Not sure when.

Can I just jump in here and add that part of what was so frustrating about this is that basically all of the leads that we weren't able to talk about, unless we're talking about there were some just throw away random leads that, sure, they just didn't seem to have any merit at all. But there was more evidence against those people than there is against Rashaun Jones. And so for the detective to be allowed to get up there and tell the jury straight up that all roads led to Rashaun Jones. Nobody else could have done it. Nobody else had a 38. It hasn't been proven that Rashaun had a 38. It hasn't even really been proven that the bullet itself was a 38. It was almost completely flattened or partially flattened.

Sarah, wasn't there some testimony that Rashaun Jones made reference to having his 38 on?

Yes. There were two witnesses who testified about Rashaun and guns. Both of them are now police officers, and both of them are also... They were Pata's best friends and are still very, very close to the family. One of them testified that Rashaun said something to the effect of, Big bro, I got my 38 on. Mind you, Rashaun's number on the team was 38. So who knows?

So that was his Jersey number? That was his Jersey number. So he would literally have had a 38 on?

Correct. Also, he was not friends with it. Even this guy admits that they weren't really buddies, so don't know why he would be saying such things to this person if he was saying these things at all. And then the other person who testified, Dave Howell, also a police officer, also friends with the Pata's. He basically said that Rashaun had shown him a gun at some point. This happened in the context of someone else's dorm room where that person didn't see anything, didn't hear anything. Then he said that he believed it could be, I believe, a smaller caliber firearms, but he could only even tell what gun he thought it could potentially be based on his police experience 20 years after the fact. Looking back on that, he now knows that it was this type of gun, which happens to be consistent.

Sarah, what do we know about what happened with this jury? You had six people deliberating for six hours last Friday, another hour and change on Monday this week. The hung jury, what do we know, though? How did the vote come down?

Yeah. It would appear that it was 5 to one, five not guilty, one holdout who, according to reporters who were able to speak with this person, and I'm not sure who this person is, but they wouldn't move based on a gut feeling, and they weren't willing to discuss that gut feeling with the rest of the jurors once they had made up their mind.

Refused to deliberate at that point, hence the hung jury in the mistrial. Danielle, with a 5 to one in favor of acquittal, what's next? Is the state going to retry this case with the evidence and the same witnesses that they nearly lost with?

I mean, ultimately, that's what they're posturing for. We're ready. We're going to keep fighting. I know that they Their only posture has been, Continue on to trial. We haven't heard anything otherwise. We fully, as Sarah beautifully said it, when we were leaving the courtroom after the mistrial, we're going to keep fighting. Because we know that Rashaun is innocent.

Christian, Rashaun Jones has been in jail since August of 2021. I mean, this summer, it'll be five years. He was offered a plea of 15 years. He's already almost served a third of what the plea was. I don't know if he did it or he didn't do it, but clearly, the way the justice system works, he is now a victim to some extent of this. He's got bail, though, right? He just can't afford to post it, which is a fucked up way that this system works. I mean, if you had the money, he'd be out on the street for all this time. But what happens now with him? How is he doing? How's he feeling? What's morale like? And is there some reconsideration on bail or something?

Yeah. So his bond, I believe it's currently $850,000. We have a motion that's set for hearing tomorrow to get a bond reduction based on the mistrial and some of the other information we learned about what the jury where he was thinking and the split. And hopefully, we can get a bond reduction so that he can get out of custody for the time being until the retrial happens. But as far as what he's feeling, I think he feels similar to what I was explaining to you at the beginning. Nobody feels like it was a win, but it also wasn't a loss. And he's been waiting now four and a half years, almost five years for his day in court. And he's willing to, if he has to remain in, if the motion to modify bond gets denied, he's willing to do whatever it takes and wait as long as he needs to get his next day in court. Because like he said, when the judge was asking him questions about a potential plea, he knows that he's innocent, and he does not want to plea guilty to a crime that he didn't commit. So that's where we're at.

Hopefully, he can get out pending this retrial. But if not, I don't see any resolution as of right now. Of course, things Things might change.

But- Roy, this is just a compounding tragedy because, of course, the Pata family has no closure here whatsoever. Brian Pata cannot rest in peace. And at the same time, you've got Rashaun Jones in this position where, again, I don't know if he did it or not, but when you're in the stage of the system, it's a matter of what can the prosecution prove beyond a reasonable doubt. If they didn't feel they could make this case in 2006 or 2007, what makes them think that they can do it beyond a reasonable doubt 20 years later? As it turned out, they couldn't. If you got a jury five to one voting for acquittal, I really feel for the Patta family and the continuing tragedy of going through this.

To be clear, we do, too. We all do. What happened to Brian was tragic. It should have never happened, no matter what he was involved in. We're not trying to slander him. He didn't deserve that. Nobody deserves that. But you got to get the right guy.

Christian Maroney, Sarah Alvarez, and Daniel Perez, thanks so much for being here. Good luck to you.

Thank you.

Before we go, Roy.

Roy. Hi.

You remember Joe Correo, don't you? He's a wife be her wife be her.

Yeah, that's Joe Correo.

Brings a bell.

Remember that lawsuit he lost for 62. 5 million dollars for weaponizing city government against those business owners in Little Havana.

Yeah, we didn't talk enough about that.

And you'd think now that he's retired and sailed off to Shangri-La. Little Billy Corbin. That we wouldn't have to talk about it anymore. But the damnest thing happened. Apparently, he tried to appeal the case again, the verdict, to the United States Supreme Court. What? An attorney, Jeff Gutches, who's been a guest on this program who represented the owners of Ball and Chain, released this statement. The United States Supreme Court denied certiori in Fuller v. Correo, leaving in place the lower court's ruling in favor of William Fuller and Martin Penia. With that decision, this case has finally reached its end. For years, my clients, small business owners, endured retaliation, financial harm, and significant stress on their families for exercising their First Amendment rights. The courts made clear that such conduct is unconstitutional. It is unfortunate that the city of Miami chose to spend millions of taxpayer dollars defending this abuse rather than accepting responsibility. Today's outcome reaffirms that constitutional protections apply to everyone and that government retaliation has consequences. Now, those consequences are a 62. 5 million dollar judgment. Coming up, they're going to trial, Roy, on a case that could bankrupt the city, that could cost the city taxpayers over $100 million because the first time, they just sued Joe Correlio.

But this time, they're suing the city of Miami for this weaponization, using all the same evidence and all the same witnesses and all the same exhibits that they used in the first trial that they won. You better believe they're going to win this time. There's going to be good money after bad, and it's going to cost the taxpayers nine figures. Grand opening, grand closing. Cocaine's. Mike, you know I have one rule to live by, right?

Don't place parlays on multiple long shots. Don't say a game is one when it hasn't hit triple zero.

Always drink your Jägermeister ice cold. That's the rule. Everything else is merely a suggestion.

Everything else?

Everything else.

Wearing clean underwear Or don't drink it at all.

Damn, that's just a personal decision. Brushing your teeth? Obviously smart, but not a rule. Never PP on an electric fence. Okay, maybe there are two rules, but the one that is 100% that I insist on completely, Jägermeister must be drunk ice cold. Or You're finally starting to get it.

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