Convicted killer’s lawyers want his racist views kept from jury in retrial

Defense lawyers for former death row inmate Peter Avsenew don’t want the jury at his retrial to know what he said about gay people. Or white supremacy. Or himself.

Avsenew is accused of murdering Kevin Powell, 52, and Stephen Adams, 47, a Wilton Manors couple who took Avsenew into their home in late 2010. At his first trial in 2017, Avsenew was convicted of their murder, and a jury recommended a death sentence. Then he wrote a letter to Broward Circuit Judge Ilona Holmes, who oversaw the case.

“It is my duty as a white man to cull the weak and timid from existence,” he wrote. “Homosexuals are a disease to mankind and must be put down. These weren’t the first and won’t be the last. I must secure an existence for white people and a future for white children.”

Broward prosecutors submitted the letter as possible evidence that can be used when Avsenew is retried for the murders. The Florida Supreme Court overturned his 2017 conviction and death sentence earlier this year.

In a motion filed Tuesday, scheduled for argument Thursday, Avsenew’s lawyer asked the current judge on the case, Martin Fein, to block prosecutors from presenting the letter to the jury.

“The letter, when scrutinized, makes no specific admission to the murders at issue,” wrote Assistant Public Defender Gabe Ermine. “There is no evidence outside this letter that shows the victims in this case were targeted due to their sexual orientation.”

Both victims in the murder case were white, Ermine noted, expressing a concern that the racist elements of the letter would be inflammatory.

In the letter, Avsenew never denies the murders and appears to admit he worked his way up to killing people.

“I’ve been like this for as long as I can remember,” Avsenew wrote. “It started with animals, dogs, cats, frogs, snakes, squirrels, possums, etc. Then that wasn’t enough. They were too easy. I can’t put into words the feeling of ending a life. It’s euphoric at the least.”

Proscecutors have not submitted a response to the defense motion.

Avsenew will again face the possibility of a death sentence if convicted.