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VERDICT: Guilty: Michael Drejka convicted of manslaughter in the death of Markeis McGlockton
LARGO – The jury proceedings continued late into the evening of Friday, in the trial of Michael Drejka, accused of manslaughter in the shooting of Markeis McGlockton in a parking lot.
The hearing room was left in abeyance for hours while she was debating whether the shooting of July 19, 2018 in the Circle A food store near Clearwater was justified by self-defense or a crime punishable by up to 30 years in prison.
After five hours of deliberation, the jurors sent a note to Judge Joe Bulone of the Pinellas-Pasco circuit at approximately 9:30 pm asking for clarification on what defines reasonable doubt in the justified use of lethal force.
But the judge and the lawyers agreed that they had given the jury all possible instructions during the trial of one week. They took the six jurors back to the courtroom to explain that.
"I do not think I will really be able to explain what the instructions are legally," Bulone said. "They are what they are."
Then he sent them back to the jury room at 10:05 pm
Outside the courtroom, spectators, including McGlockton's parents, sat on the benches and paced the hallway. Michele Rayner-Goolsby, a lawyer representing McGlockton's parents, said she hoped the jurors would come back with a guilty verdict. She added that she thought the state had put in place a "huge case".
Shortly after the jury left for the deliberation room, another deputy spoke with reporters outside the courthouse. Keith Booe said that he would have sentenced Drejka. He said that Drejka had time to stop and think when he touched the ground and pulled the trigger.
"He had the opportunity not to kill him," Booe said.
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During this week's trial, jurors heard witnesses ranging from experts in toxicology and use of force to a man whom Drejka had faced five months earlier on the same parking lot. Britany Jacobs, McGlockton's girlfriend, told them that Drejka had approached for the first time on the day of the shooting.
"I was scared," said Jacobs, 26, to jurors. "I did not know who this strange and suspicious man was."
Drejka's team of four lawyers focused on self-defense.
"He did what he thought he should do, in the moment, in the split second, since he was attacked," said Drejka's lawyer, John Trevena, during his final argument.
"You can not agree with the law. But you swore as a juror to enforce the law.
The state pointed out that McGlockton had gone back once Drejka had pulled out his weapon, making the fear of additional danger unreasonable.
"He took the life of another human being without any legal justification," said Attorney Fred Schaub during his opening statement.
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During the closing arguments, Schaub was animated, using the entire courtroom, ranging from the witness bar to the jury bar, pointing, raising his hands in the air. He punched the wooden panels in the courtroom to emphasize certain points.
"It's not Markeis McGlockton," he says, taking a photo of the autopsy. "It's a body on an autopsy table."
"He was a human being in our world. And take his life worth it? … Think about it: what happened to this country?
The shooting has been controversial from the beginning, addressing polarizing issues such as gun rights, self-defense and race.
Drejka is white. McGlockton was not armed and black. The case was compared to that of George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer in Florida who was acquitted after the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, 17 years old. This case caused the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.
But unlike the Zimmerman case, the video was a key part of Drejka's trial. The circle's surveillance images A food store located at 1201, Sunset Point Road, captured the entirety of the shooting, offering jurors a unique opportunity to visit the scene.
Associated story: Why video makes Florida a different topic of discussion
The decision of Bob Gualtieri, sheriff of Pinellas not to stop Drejka immediately, put the case on a national stage and triggered a new debate on the law passed by Florida. Gualtieri said that his agency was not able to stop Drejka because of this.
"I can not, and we can not, substitute our judgment for Drejka's," Gualtieri said last year.
The incident began when McGlockton and his family stopped at the convenience store around 3:30 pm His girlfriend, Britany Jacobs, was parked in a disabled area, outside the convenience store, and waited in the car with two of the couple's children, aged 4 months and 3 years old at the time. McGlockton, 28, entered the store with their third child, Markeis Jr., who was 5 years old.
Drejka entered the parking lot and approached Jacobs. He asked Jacobs why she parked there if she did not have a plaque or plaque designating a disability. Both started to argue. This escalated to the point that other people on the parking lot started to pay attention.
One of the witnesses entered the store and informed the clerk of what was happening. McGlockton retreated outside, approached Drejka and pushed him to the ground.
Drejka pulled out a 40-caliber Glock handgun and shot McGlockton once in the chest. McGlockton was taken to Morton Plant Hospital and his death was pronounced shortly thereafter.
After the sheriff's announcement, demonstrations broke out, calling for an arrest. Two prominent civil rights lawyers have signed to represent McGlockton's family members. The Democratic candidates for governorship passed through Clearwater as a revolving door, calling for a change in the law. Reverend Al Sharpton also stopped in town, asking the sheriff to return his badge.
About three weeks after the shooting, Pinellas-Pasco's Attorney General's Office charged Drejka with manslaughter.
"Drejka keeps the gun with both hands," wrote a detective in his arrest warrant. "McGlockton immediately backs away when he is confronted with the gun."
From there, the case was dealt with fairly quickly by the courts for the chronically entangled criminal justice system. Drejka appeared at several pre-trial hearings to determine what evidence would be admitted at trial. McGlockton's parents, Michael McGlockton and Monica Moore-Robinson, attended almost everyone, sitting a few steps from their son's shooter.
One of the key moments came in April when prosecutors Schaub and Scott Rosenwasser were able to convince the jury to hear about a previous gun threat from Drejka.
The target of the threat, Richard Kelly, said in court this week that he had parked his tanker in the same parking space in the same convenience store. Kelly walked out of the store to find Drejka going around her truck and taking pictures. They started arguing.
Then Drejka "said," I should shoot you, I'm killing you, "Kelly told the jury.
Drejka then called Kelly's boss, John Tyler, who also testified in court. Tyler told the jurors that Drejka had stated that if he had a gun, he could have shot Kelly.
"I said," I'm sorry for how you feel, "Tyler told the jury. "I have a firearm and during my training, I was taught to escape," he said.
During the past year, as the case unfolded, side projections were also taking place outside the courtroom. Drejka's first lawyer, Lysa Clifton, recently gave up her law degree during an investigation into how she approached Drejka to represent him. She was on the case for about two months before retiring, citing "irreconcilable differences".
A few months later, Drejka's lawyer, John Trevena, made headlines by filing court documents exposing crude accusations against a couple who, Trevena wrote, had stolen from the newspaper. money to his law firm and had made his wife addict.
He later dropped the charges, but his personal life continued to make headlines when he was arrested under the charge of "domestic battery" against his ex-wife. Prosecutors finally dropped the charges.
The sheriff's chief investigator in charge of the case was also arrested. Deputies said that he had arrived drunk at the scene of a crime. He faces a charge of driving under the influence that is still finding its way into the judicial system.
None of this information has been done in the court room, deemed irrelevant or prejudicial by the judge.
Instead, the jurors heard the facts of the case, until the end, when counsel for each party presented their final arguments. As Drejka's defense exacerbated her perceived fear for a few moments before pulling the trigger, the state reminded the jury of what had been lost.
"Do you know what Markeis McGlockton is guilty of?" Rosenwasser asked. "He is guilty of loving and trying to protect his family and he died because of it."
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