Trial in 2012 killing set for October

A trial in the 2012 shooting death of a high school football player in Palm Beach County is now set to start Oct. 11.

Prosecutors recently lost an appeal over evidence they say implicates a teen accused of the crime. Frank Quarles was 15 when he was charged as an adult with first-degree murder and two gun counts in the killing of Michael CoogleRobertson, 16, in suburban Lantana. The Feb. 8, 2012, shooting was allegedly over a dispute about a bicycle.

For the past 12 months, the case has been on hold as prosecutors appealed the trial judge’s April 2016 ruling that prevents the jury from hearing that Quarles told a detective he had the gun a few days before the fatal shooting.

The appeal ended last month with a victory for the defense. The Fourth District Court of Appeal ruled the statement will stay out of the trial.

Quarles will remain in Palm Beach County Jail for his 21st birthday later this week. He’s been in custody since the shooting, despite his attorneys’ pleas for bond and house arrest.

Circuit Judge Samantha Schosberg Feuer on Friday scheduled the trial for this fall.

“It’s been a long time,” defense attorney Michael Salnick said Monday. “We’re looking forward to finally going to trial.”

The tragic case focuses on what happened when Quarles allegedly confronted Coogle-Robertson, standing with two other youths, before 4:30 p.m. in the 3600 block of Kewanee Drive, in the Seminole Manor neighborhood near the high school.

An argument ensued about a beachcomber bike that Quarles said had been stolen from him.

Quarles wound up leaving with the bike and returned about 15 minutes later with a .38-caliber revolver, an arrest report states. CoogleRobertson had recently bought the bike for $40 but had no idea it was stolen, according to his relatives.

In an interview with Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Detective John Halloran, Quarles told the detective he was “shaking” during the confrontation with Coogle-Robertson, and “tapped” the trigger on the gun “and it went off” but “didn’t even mean to,” court records show.

“I feel so bad, I feel like throwing up,” Quarles said, later adding, “It’s not like I intentionally wanted to shoot him, though.”

He told the detective that he went to his house, in the same community, to get the gun to “just prove a point.”

“All I was doing was just flashing it,” Quarles told Halloran.

“Why did I even kill someone for a bike?” he said. “It’s a bike. And now I have to spend the rest, the rest of my life in here, bro. I’m never gonna see anyone ... All I’m gonna see is just angry people in jail staring at me.”

Prosecutors say Quarles intentionally shot his older classmate.

In a previous pretrial ruling, Judge Schosberg Feuer denied a defense motion to keep Quarles’ entire statement and confession away from the jury.

The defense had raised several points, including that Quarles didn’t understand his right to remain silent, and that his statement was involuntary because of “psychological coercion” by the detective, including comments Halloran made about it being “a death penalty case” even though it wasn’t because of the teen’s age.

But the judge found Quarles spoke to the detective “of his own free will and not police intimidation, coercion, or deception.”

Schosberg Feuer, however, agreed with a defense request to prevent jurors from hearing Halloran’s comment that Quarles looked “like a cold-blooded killer.”

Assistant State Attorney Jill Richstone has said Coogle-Robertson’s mother has been frustrated by the trial delays, but is confident Quarles ultimately will be convicted.

“At a minimum (Quarles) has confessed to manslaughter and a maximum he’s confessed to firstdegree murder,” the prosecutor said at a hearing last September.

Quarles