Man gets life in prison in teen girl’s slaying
Convicted killer Sanel Saint-Simon should get life behind bars — rather than a death sentence — for the murder of 16-year-old Alexandria Chery, a jury decided unanimously Thursday.
The jury deliberated for just over an hour before reaching its decision.
Alexandria’s mother, Rosalie Joseph, and her older brother, Fanzo Chery, sat silently in court as the verdict was read. Saint-Simon smiled and thanked his defense attorneys and the courtroom deputies.
“I honestly can say that they wanted justice, and they thought justice will be either-or,” prosecutor Ryan Williams said of the jurors’ decision. “I just know that Rosalie Joseph told me it’s gonna be OK, and she’s happy, and that makes me feel better. That’s the most important.”
Saint-Simon, 47, was convicted in February of
murdering 16-year-old Alexandria, an Olympia High School student and the daughter of Joseph, Saint Simon’s then-longtime girlfriend. Saint-Simon helped raise Alexandria since she was about 5 years old, and her family has said he sexually abused her before her murder.
The same jury that convicted him of first-degree murder, aggravated child abuse and lying to investigators in a missing child’s case returned to court this week to hear more testimony and determine whether Saint-Simon should be sentenced to death or to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
In their final arguments to the jurors, attorneys for both the prosecution and defense brought up mercy.
“Justice is getting what you deserve,” Williams told jurors Thursday. “That is a brute definition. Mercy is deliverance from that justice. It’s a powerful concept, mercy, one we’re all familiar with. But make no mistake that it forsakes justice.”
But Assistant Public Defender Erin Hyde suggested the two concepts can go together, telling jurors that “justice is tempered by mercy.”
“It is a life worth saving,” Hyde said of Saint Simon. “It is a life that you should save. He never will be released, he never will breathe the air of a free man. And that alone is the punishment he should suffer.”
In arguing for Saint-Simon’s execution, prosecutors presented four factors outlined in Florida’s death penalty statute for which jurors can impose the death penalty.
The jurors found the state had proved two of those factors beyond a reasonable doubt: that the
“The really important thing is that jurors made the decision; it wasn’t made for them by somebody else,” Ryan Williams, prosecutor
murder was committed while Saint-Simon was engaged in aggravated child abuse; and that Alexandria was especially vulnerable because Saint-Simon was in a position of parental or custodial authority over her.
But jurors determined the state did not prove the other two aggravating factors: that the murder was especially heinous, atrocious or cruel; and that the crime was carried out in a cold, calculated and premeditated fashion. The proven aggravating factors were not enough to impose death, jurors determined.
As the courtroom clerk read the verdict, Fanzo Chery sat leaning forward, his forearms resting on his legs and hands covering part of his face. His mother sat one row behind him, looking straight ahead.
Joseph is the person who reported Alexandria missing on July 28, 2014, when she came home and found her daughter gone and her belongings missing from her bedroom.
Landscapers found Alexandria’s body on the Osceola-Polk county line on Aug. 1, 2014. Her body was decomposing, and a medical examiner could not determine a cause of death, but found skull fractures and stab wounds on her body.
This week, jurors heard from Alexandria’s family and friends, who described her always-smiling face and the pain her death brought them.
They also heard from Alexandria’s ex-boyfriend, who said she told him Saint-Simon touched her inappropriately at least four times in the months before she was killed.
Saint-Simon’s family members testified via video from Haiti, where he was born and raised.
They described his poor childhood in a rural part of the country and how he went on to succeed, becoming a ferry boat captain and then immigrating to the U.S. in 1999 and sending money back to his family and three children there.
“That isn’t to excuse what you have found in your verdict,” Hyde said. “It is to show you the life of Sanel Saint-Simon, a man who sent money back to the very mother who abandoned him on his grandmother’s doorstep, a woman who didn’t even know him.”
Saint-Simon’s case was one of 29 Gov. Rick Scott took away from Orange Osceola State Attorney Aramis Ayala after she announced last year that she would not seek the death penalty in any case. She has since created a review board to weigh possible death-penalty cases.
Williams, who worked for Ayala’s office, left his job to join Ocala-based prosecutor Brad King, to whom Scott reassigned the 29 cases. He has been prosecuting many of the cases taken from his old office.
“The really important thing is that jurors made the decision; it wasn’t made for them by somebody else,” Williams said after the verdict.
Saint-Simon will be back in court May 18 for a formal sentencing hearing.