Testimony ends in ex-student’s murder trial
At issue is whether crime was murder or manslaughter.
WEST PALM BEACH — There’s no doubt that Frank Quarles ended the life of a fellow Santaluces High School student five years ago after they argued over Quarles’ stolen bike.
The only thing that a Palm Beach County jury began deliberating Thursday was whether the killing was accidental or a case of first-degree murder.
Testimony in Quarles’ weeklong trial ended Thursday with more anguish and tears from defense witnesses who recounted the circumstances before, during and after Quarles shot and killed 16-year-old Michael Robertson.
Circuit Judge Samantha Schosberg Feuer asked jurors to return to court today to continue deciding the case after their brief deliberations followed closing arguments that centered on Quarles’ own words when he spoke to a detective after the shooting.
Assistant State Attorneys Jill Richstone and Chrichet Mixon said the recorded statement Quarles gave depicted him as a selfish, angry teen who killed Robertson because he felt disrespected after he discovered Robertson had taken ownership of his stolen bike.
One of Robertson’s friends testified this week that Robertson had purchased the bike from someone in the neighborhood not knowing it was stolen and tried to sell it back to Quarles for $10 after Quarles tried to reclaim the bike.
In the 20 minutes it took for Quarles to take his bike back, ride home, pick up a gun he had hidden under his bed, and ride back to the house in the 3600 block of Kewanee Road west of Lantana where Robertson and his friends were hanging out, prosecutors said his building anger sparked his intent to kill Robertson.
“It wasn’t enough that he got his bike back. It wasn’t enough that it was over,” Mixon told jurors. “It wasn’t enough because he was not going to let Michael Robertson or anyone out there that day make him look bad.”
Defense attorney Michael Salnick in his closing arguments pointed to Quarles’ repeated claims in the same statement that the shooting was an accident.
Salnick called it “a textbook case of manslaughter” and asked the jury to convict Quarles of the lesser offense. Quarles, now 21 but just 15 at the time of the shooting, would face up to 15 years in prison in that scenario. If convicted as charged, he faces up to life in prison.
“How many times did he say, ‘I wish it didn’t happen that way?’ How many times did he say, ‘I didn’t want Mike to die?’ ” Salnick said. “The results were tragic and Frankie has to answer for that, but it is not first-degree premeditated murder.”
Richstone told jurors that delivering a manslaughter verdict, or splitting the difference with a second-degree murder conviction, would be a miscarriage of justice.
If Quarles didn’t mean to cause harm and merely wanted to act tough, Richstone said, why did he bring the gun back loaded? Richstone, who at one point during the trial allowed jurors to handle the gun Quarles used, said it was clear he was lying when he told the detective that the gun had a hair trigger and it went off after he merely “tapped it.”
“You cannot go and do what he did that day and come back and claim it’s an accident,” Richstone said. “He’s not 15 anymore, but even at the age of 15 he knew exactly what he was doing, and for whatever reason, whatever was going on in his life, he just didn’t care.”
Quarles did not take the stand in his own defense during the trial.
Before closing arguments, Salnick wanted to call to the witness stand an expert who testified outside of the jury’s presence that adolescents like Quarles can be impulsive and not understand the gravity of their actions — sentiments that would bolster the defense claims that the shooting was accidental.
But Feuer disallowed the testimony, and Quarles’ defense team concluded their case after calling Darron Gillion, a teen witness to the shooting, and Quarles’ mother, Kathy, as witnesses.
Gillion, a friend of Robertson’s who also once attended a private school with Quarles, broke down in tears several times on the witness stand as he recalled watching Quarles shoot Robertson.
Gillion said that while Quarles held the gun, he was “shaking, like he didn’t want to do it.”
“But he did shoot him, didn’t he?” Mixon later asked Gillion on cross-examination.
The young man responded by putting his head down on the witness stand and covering his face with his arm as he sobbed.
Kathy Quarles recounted her harrowing ordeal of having police investigators order her out of the home and forcing her and her husband to remain outside for hours as they searched for the gun. The police showed up on her porch just moments after her son told her he had merely witnessed a shooting, she said.
Jurors are expected to return to court to continue deciding the case today.