Casey’s Nickelodeon retrial begins
Pablo Ibar spent 16 years on death row, convicted of killing three people in a home invasion robbery that was captured on surveillance video.
On Monday, he was back in a Broward courtroom, where lawyers and a judge were picking a new jury to decide, again, whether Ibar is a killer who has forfeited his right to live.
Ibar, 46, is accused of the 1994 murders of Casimir “Butch Casey” Sukarski, Sharon Anderson and Marie Rogers. Anderson and Rogers guests at Sucharski’s home in Miramar.
Prosecutors believe Ibar was one of two men who burst into the home, beat the victims and shot them to death.
Juries have had mixed reactions to prosecutors’ arguments. In 1997, a jury deadlocked over whether to convict Ibar and his orig-
inal co-defendant, Seth Penalver.
Two years later, after a lengthy trial, Penalver was convicted and sent to death row. A few months later, Ibar was tried as well. He was convicted and, like Penalver, sentenced to death.
But that was not the end. Penalver challenged his conviction and earned a third trial.
In late 2012, he was found not guilty. He is now a free man.
Ibar’s third chance came in 2016
— the Florida Supreme Court overturned the verdict after determining that his lawyer failed to mount a proper defense.
The passage of time is one of the most significant challenges in presenting the case to a new jury. But prosecutors believe that one significant piece of newly obtained evidence may help them send Ibar back to death row — DNA on a T-shirt that was found outside the murder scene was matched to Ibar last year.
While off death row, Ibar remains in custody at least for the duration of the trial.
The triple murder was captured on Sukarski’s private home security camera, but the grainy images were
The Casey’s Nickelodeon murder case was the focus of our Felonious Florida podcast. Go back and listen at SunSentinel .com/ibar -podcast
insufficient to identify the first assailant, who never took off the mask covering his face. Prosecutors believe that was Penalver.
The second assailant did remove his mask, and prosecutors insist it was Ibar’s face that is seen in the video. Whether it’s him or someone else is a question the next jury will be asked to settle.
Jury selection will proceed in two phases. The first part, which began Monday, will focus on weeding out those who know too much about the case or whose feelings about the death penalty are too strong to guarantee they will be impartial.
Once the field is narrowed, potential jurors will return to Broward Circuit Judge Dennis Bailey’s courtroom to begin the process of finding 12 jurors and enough alternates to guarantee enough will be able to sit through the entire trial.
It’s not clear how long the trial will take. Penalver’s last trial took more than six months, and Ibar’s next trial should go over many of the same facts.
The first phase of jury selection is scheduled to continue throughout this week.