Man accused of murdering pregnant niece challenges Florida’s death penalty law

Johnathan Quiles is charged with first-degree murder for allegedly raping and killing his 16-year-old niece.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A man accused of raping and murdering his teenage niece believes Florida’s new death penalty law should not apply to him.

Johnathan Quiles, 33, is charged with first-degree murder and sexual battery for allegedly killing 16-year-old Iyana Sawyer.

The girl was last seen leaving Jacksonville’s Terry Parker High School in December 2018. She was pregnant at the time, with what police believe was Quiles’ child. Her body was never found.

Quiles is also charged separately with raping another young relative.

His attorney Friday said he should be tried and sentenced under a former state law requiring unanimous jury verdicts in death cases.

“The law that was in place at the time required a unanimous verdict,” attorney Robert Davis told Circuit Judge R. Anthony Salem. “And the governor signing this law back in April, asking for an 8-4, well -- Mr. Quiles was arrested [in 2019], and those laws that were in place at the time of his arrest, we believe apply at the time of his trial.”

The judge delayed hearing arguments on the issue after Assistant State Attorney Dan Skinner said he’d prefer some more time to respond to the defense death penalty motions, which were just filed Wednesday.

The judge also addressed a motion Quiles filed, seeking to fire his attorneys and represent himself at trial, but he withdrew that motion today. He told Judge Salem legal matters were “out of my field of expertise,” and that he’d misunderstood the motion.

“I assumed that by filing this motion, there would be questions that I could ask directly to the people that’s against me, but that’s not the case. That was my understanding. That’s where I’m at. I don’t have much information on a lot of the case ...”

Quiles’ attorneys also told the judge today that, against their advice, he was refusing to let them file a motion to sever the murder charges from the sexual battery charges. Such requests are designed to keep jurors focused on the facts of the murder, and not taint their perspective by viewing the defendant as a sexual predator.

Davis said he wanted the matter on the record in case Quiles later tries to use the failure to sever in ineffective assistance of counsel claim on appeal.

The trial is set to begin September 11 and is expected to take two weeks.

Source: First Coast News, Staff, August 18, 2023

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