Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Killer faces death for 2017 murders
Defense argues mental illness led to shooting of woman and her child
Marlin Joseph’s lawyers are trying to convince a Palm Beach County jury that he shouldn’t be executed for the murders of a mother and her 11-year-old girl.
How do they do that? By painting a different picture of the 28-year-old man with long dreadlocks who fired a gun at the heads of two innocent people and then fled from the cops.
“Someone that did something awful, unforgivable, but someone who is also deserving of mercy,” is how attorney Sean Wagner described his client on Monday, mostly blaming mental illness for the tragedy.
Just an hour earlier, the panel of six women and six men convicted Joseph in the Dec. 28, 2017, deaths of 36-year-old Kaladaa Crowell and her daughter, Kyra Inglett. The victims lived with Joseph in a West Palm Beach home. The jury took two hours to deliver the unanimous guilty verdicts.
Now prosecutors want the death penalty, which is possible only if all 12 jurors agree to recommend it. Otherwise Joseph will receive a punishment of life in prison without the possibility of parole, said Circuit Judge Cheryl Caracuzzo.
A vote is anticipated on Tuesday, after Joseph’s family members, friends and a medical expert testify on his behalf.
Assistant State Attorney Jo Wilensky has already offered several reasons, or aggravating factors in legal parlance, to justify capital punishment.
She called the murders “especially
heinous, atrocious, or cruel,” for the way Joseph gunned down his victims. She said the slayings were committed in a “cold, calculated, and premeditated manner” without any reason. Moreover, one of the victims was younger than 12, with a birth certificate offered as proof.
Wilensky also told the jury that Joseph was a previously convicted felon, who was guilty of a crime of violence, specifically battery on a child in 2014. This charge involved alleged consensual sex with a 14-year-old girl. He was sentenced to two years in prison and was on probation at the time of the killings.
“There is no mitigation that can possibly outweigh what the defendant has done in this case,” the prosecutor said.
Joseph’s counsel responded:
is not the answer.”
Wagner tried to reassure the jury that Joseph has been permanently removed from society: “The only way Marlin Joseph gets out of prison is in a pine box.”
The defense told the story of his life: He grew up in Palm Beach County in a close-knit, large family, with his father largely absent. He played high school football and could have been a prospect for college or the pros, but his grades were poor.
Joseph later fathered two children before he began suffering from mental illness. While he did not use an insanity defense in the trial, Joseph had experienced delusions and paranoia for a time before the shootings, Wagner said.
“These murders were not motivated by hatred, by evil, by anything that would make a human being deservway ing of death,” he said. “They were motivated by mental illness, and an acute fear that people were conspiring against him, probably including the two wonderful people who lost their lives.”
For this reason, Wagner reasoned, “executing Marlin Joseph would be grossly disproportionate to any of the terrible things that happened in this case.”
The killings happened inside and outside a house at 822 Third St. Kyra was shot five times on the front walk“Death as she tried to run from Joseph, according to trial testimony. Three of the bullets hit her head, and she died a couple of hours later.
Crowell also was shot five times, including two bullets in her head, in one of the rooms, the prosecution said. She was dating Joseph’s mother.
The prosecutors argued Joseph deliberately killed both after getting angry over Kyra’s treatment of his own daughter, 8.
Joseph fled the scene after the shootings and was captured five days later by U.S. Marshals. He’s been in custody ever since.
Last year, the case was transferred to mental health court for several months, but Joseph was found mentally competent to stand trial.