Deputy’s killers deserve to die, state says
A jury’s life or death decision in the case of three men convicted of murdering Broward Sheriff’s Deputy Brian Tephford could come as early as Monday.
When Andre Delancy, Bernard Forbes and Eloyn Ingraham killed Tephford in an ambush in 2006, they did not care about the details of his life, prosecutor Mike Satz said Thursday.
They didn’t care that he had a family or even that he was trying to help the woman whose car he pulled over at a Tamarac apartment complex.
They killed him because he was a law enforcement officer, and for that, Satz said, they deserve to die.
The men were convicted in
March.
Satz gave his closing argument in the penalty phase of the trial late Thursday morning. “There is no question their design was to eliminate these officers,” Satz said, referring to the slaying of Tephford and the attempted murder of his backup, Broward Sheriff ’s Deputy Corey Carbocci. “The first degree murder of Brian Tephford was done in a cold and calculated manner, without any moral or legal pretense.”
Jurors also heard from two of
the three defense lawyers asking them to show mercy.
Without the jury’s unanimous recommendation for death, a life sentence would be mandatory for all three defendants.
Mitch Polay, pleading for Delancy’s life, said there was no evidence presented that his client fired the shots that ended Tephford’s life.
Polay also portrayed the ambush was sudden and impulsive, not “cold, calculated and premeditated” as alleged by prosecutors.
Satz said Ingraham, a passenger in the vehicle Tephford had pulled over late on Nov. 6, 2006 at the Versailles Gardens condominium complex, called his friends to have them come over with guns blazing.
A motive was not established at trial — Ingraham and Forbes were later accused in a kidnapping and robbery that took place weeks before the shooting, but they were acquitted of those charges at a trial in
2015.
Attorney Edward Salantrie delivered his closing argument Thursday afternoon on behalf of Forbes, portraying him as a residual victim of his mother’s depression, still traumatized by a beating he suffered at the hands of multiple assailants five years before the Tephford shooting.
Like Polay, Salantrie reminded the jurors that any one of them could take the death penalty off the table by voting for life in prison.
“Each of you has the power to save or to take a life,” he said.
Samuel Halpern is scheduled to offer his final arguments for Ingraham’s life Friday morning.
Broward Circuit Judge Paul Backman said he will charge the jury on Monday morning. Once deliberations begin, the jury will be sequestered. There is no deadline for jurors to reach a decision.