Suspect, convicted once, has been on death row for 16 years Fifth trial in killing set for 2019
Pablo Ibar spent 16 years on Florida’s death row before he was granted a new trial in the 1994 “Casey’s Nickelodeon” murder case.
He will have to wait a few more months for that trial to get underway, a Broward judge ruled Monday.
Ibar, 46, was convicted in 2000 of murdering Casimir “Butch Casey” Sucharski and two of his guests, Sharon Anderson and Marie Rogers, in a violent robbery that was captured on a surveillance camera in Sucharski’s home.
The case has generated four trials and sent two men to death row — Seth Penalver was tried once with Ibar in 1997, resulting in a hung jury. Penalver was then tried alone and convicted. The same happened to Ibar. Both were sentenced to death.
Penalver appealed and in 2006 was granted a new trial and was acquitted in 2012.
Ibar’s appeal succeeded in 2016 when the Florida Supreme Court determined that his defense lawyer did an inadequate job of representing him during his 2000 trial.
Attorneys on both sides had planned for jury selection in Ibar’s retrial to begin Wednesday, but the scheduling had the jury getting picked over the next few weeks with opening statements not taking place until January.
Defense lawyers urged Broward Circuit Judge Dennis Bailey to reschedule. A delay of
100 days between selection and testimony would give jurors too many opportunities to stumble across information about the case, said Kevin Kulik, a member of the defense team.
Another defense lawyer, Fred Haddad, said it would be better to go directly into opening statements once jury selection was completed.
That raised other scheduling issues,
as both sides need time to question potential DNA experts who the defense plans to call.
DNA promises to figure more highly into the next trial than the previous ones — prosecutors say Ibar’s DNA was on a t-shirt found outside the murder scene. They believe Ibar was wearing the shirt over his face as a mask during the robbery.
On the surveillance video, the man with the shirt over his face removes it — whether Ibar’s face is clearly seen will be another factor in dispute.
Prosecutors William Sinclair and Chuck Morton said jurors can generally be trusted to follow a judge’s instructions, but they resisted the defense suggestion to have one set of attorneys questioning potential witnesses while another set worked on picking a jury.
Bailey’s concern was that rushing the trial would make it likely that testimony would be interrupted by the holiday season.