Filing # 63153873 E-Filed 10/23/2017 08:19:10 AM

IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE

EIGHTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT, IN AND
FOR BRADFORD COUNTY, FLORIDA

CASE NO: 04-2011-CF-000498-B

STATE OF FLORIDA

vs. EXCERPT
CLOSING ARGUMENT
WILLIAM WELLS,

Defendant

______________________________/

Proceedings: PENALTY PHASE (DAY 4)

Before: THE HONORABLE WILLIAM E. DAVIS

Circuit Judge

Date: October 4, 2017

Place: Bradford County Courthouse

Starke, Florida

Reporter: Pamela S. Connor

Registered Professional Reporter
Florida Professional Reporter

THE HONORABLE WILLIAM P. CERVONE, STATE ATTORNEY,

Eighth Judicial Circuit of Florida, by:
LUIS E. BUSTAMANTE and BRUCE A. HELLING
Assistant State Attorneys
Post Office Box 779
Starke, Florida 32091;
Attorneys for the State of Florida

TANIA Z. ALAVI TERENCE LENAMON

Attorney at Law Attorney at Law
108 North Magnolia Avenue 100 N. Biscayne, Suite 3070
Ocala, Florida 34475; Miami, Florida 33132;
Attorney for the Defendant Attorney for the Defendant

ALSO PRESENT: Kate O'Shea, Mitigation Specialist

 2

1 P R O C E E D I N G S

2 * * *

3 (Proceedings in the presence of the jury.)

4 MR. LENAMON: Good morning.

5 (Indicating.) That's the value of William Wells'

6 life to the State of Florida. They didn't spend one penny

7 to bring their own medical, psychiatric, psychological,

8 brain scan experts to come in here and refute anything our

9 doctors said.

10 And you know what? $19,000 is a lot of money.

11 There's no question about that. And how do we value a

12 man's life? Is it worth a thousand dollars, bring in some

13 person who's going to say boo-hoo, so sad, no real

14 credentials, or is it our responsibility as a society to

15 look closely underneath the carpet, behind the curtain to

16 follow the trail of breadcrumbs that I suggest that we

17 have here that clearly shows Mr. Wells is a damaged man?

18 Is that our responsibility? I would say it is our

19 responsibility.

20 About a month ago we started this process, and none

21 of you knew this was coming. None of you knew that you

22 were going to be here on October 4th having to decide

23 whether you are going to sanction the killing of a human

24 being. There's no way around what your responsibility is.

25 That's what we're here for.

 3

1 In our society we have decided as a state that we

2 will kill a human being if we feel his crime is egregious

3 enough. We will take his life. We will take him to a

4 gurney in this community, your community, Bradford County,

5 we will strap him to a gurney and we will give him drugs

6 until he is dead, his heart stops. That's what this is

7 about. That's why I spent $19,000.

8 Because before you make that decision as an

9 individual -- and we talked about this in great detail

10 during jury selection, that this part of the case is all

11 about you individually. Now, you certainly can get back

12 there and talk about it and share opinions, and if you

13 wanted to, you could try to convince your neighbor that

14 your way is the better way. But you all promised me that

15 there would be no bullying, no pushing, no trying to

16 persuade one way or the other, that you would respect each

17 other as jurors. And based on what I have seen so far,

18 there appears to be a lot of respect between you all on

19 some level.

20 In the first part of this case you asked to hear a

21 statement. You listened to a statement, you came to a

22 conclusion unanimously and honestly. I knew that

23 conclusion was going to be the conclusion you came to,

24 because the evidence supported premeditation. We're in a

25 different stage now, and I will talk to you about the

 4

1 difference in the premeditation that we're talking about

2 now, the heightened premeditation, and what occurred back

3 then.

4 But we knew that you were going to come to that

5 conclusion, because back then, during that part of the

6 case -- and in Florida the only true defense that has to

7 do with mental illness is insanity. It's a very, very

8 hard standard to abide by. You have to show someone is

9 actively insane, mentally ill. There's all these rules,

10 and rightfully so, to be excused of that crime.

11 We didn't have that in this case. We knew about

12 William. We knew about his life history. We knew about

13 the 2003 murders. We knew all that. We knew all the

14 diagnoses that he had suffered. We knew the suicidal

15 tendencies he's had, his desire to die. We knew all that.

16 We talked about some of that in jury selection. But we

17 also knew in his statement he clearly makes clear that he

18 wants to kill this guy, and then he goes about in this

19 plan.

20 Now, the difference here, though, is that you guys

21 get to look inside William Wells, in his distorted mind

22 that has been presented to you to address that aggravating

23 factor. And although he clearly planned, there are a

24 whole bunch of things, I will call those breadcrumbs, from

25 this particular case -- because there's a lot of

 5

1 breadcrumbs from his life that we'll talk about over the

2 next hour or so -- but the breadcrumbs from this

3 particular case that clearly show you that he didn't have

4 that heightened premeditation that the judge is going to

5 instruct you on in the jury instruction.

6 And the prosecutor just briefed over it when he was

7 addressing the aggravating factor, but the important part

8 in the jury instruction is that -- because in this

9 particular case, the only aggravating factor -- and when I

10 say "this case," the murder of Mr. Rodriguez -- the only

11 aggravating factor that is in play that is related to his

12 case is what's called cold, calculated and premeditated.

13 It's an aggravating factor, and he went through the

14 multiple steps of how you get there.

15 The first three steps are really kind of what

16 premeditation is, what you had to decide in this case.

17 But as I talked to you about a minute ago, in the

18 beginning when we were defending him we couldn't bring up

19 all the things that were mentally wrong with William

20 Wells, all the things that may go into your conclusion of

21 not finding that aggravating factor carries a lot of

22 weight or is proven.

23 Now, the elements -- and we're going to talk about

24 this specifically and how this plays out. The elements of

25 cold, calculated, premeditated, as I said, are spelled out

 6

1 in the instructions. The first three are really the

2 heightened premeditation.

3 We heard he had a plan. Mr. Bustamante got up here

4 and did this little show for you, going through all these

5 issues about all this really careful planning and so

6 forth, so on.

7 The final part of cold, calculated, premeditated

8 is -- and it starts with "however," so you know when

9 they're saying "however" that they're thinking, the

10 legislature is thinking back, well, this is different than

11 what has to be proven for premeditation. There's a

12 difference between premeditation and this, because they

13 said, "However, in order for this aggravating factor to

14 apply, a heightened level of premeditation demonstrated by

15 a substantial period of reflection." So heightened level

16 of premeditation, substantial period of reflection, those

17 are the elements that you have to determine whether they

18 were proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

19 Now, Mr. Bustamante wants you to believe that because

20 at two o'clock, after initially in the morning saying

21 that, "I don't know if I'm gonna kill this guy, but I'm

22 going to F him up," that the plan that began at two

23 o'clock was this heightened level of premeditation and

24 demonstrated by a substantial period of reflection.

25 Now, in the mitigation section you're going to hear

 7

1 60 different mitigating factors that you get to consider.

2 Before I sit down, I'm going to go through -- I'm not

3 going to go through all 60. I'm not going to even read

4 them. I'm going to show you how you make your decision on

5 each, how it applies, what you can look for and how you

6 make your determination and so forth and so on. But one

7 of those, if I remember correctly, has to do with becoming

8 basically under the spell of Mr. Doty. I don't remember

9 the exact language, but the judge will read it to you.

10 Why is this important? Okay. There was certain

11 planning going on. He was part of this. But now you have

12 something else going on. You know from Dr. Holmes that

13 this man had been in isolation. He had been sent there

14 after the attempted murder and that Doty was kind of the

15 first one that he befriended and that it was really Doty

16 who was running this kind of focused killing.

17 How do we know that? He's the one who got the knife.

18 He's the one who wanted to stab him. We know for a fact

19 he's the one who choked him. And even though Mr. Wells --

20 and the state points out that Mr. Wells put his fingers

21 over his nose. At that point he was dead.

22 And so we know that there's this whole convoluted

23 thing that goes on throughout these cases about Mr. Wells

24 wanting to die and Mr. Wells wanting to get the death

25 penalty, and I suggest to you that that's a follow-up of

 8

1 the events that had transpired, that these aren't

2 primarily focused, decision-making points that Mr. Wells

3 uses.

4 Because if you read and listen to his statement, the

5 only time he says something about the death penalty is

6 when that man back there, Inspector Snow, who was taking

7 his statement, tells you that he had previously suggested

8 to him about if you really want to get the death penalty,

9 why don't you tell me this and tell me that, and then he

10 tells him the story.

11 And I'm not saying that Inspector Snow suggested

12 anything that was improper. Inspector Snow was doing his

13 job. He was trying to find out what went on and he was

14 trying to find out what the truth was. And so what we

15 hear in his statement really are these breadcrumbs of

16 truth that really go against the guise of this heightened

17 premeditation and the substantial period of reflection.

18 I mean, you saw the video what's going on, and

19 certainly there was a conversation with him, with Doty,

20 about how this was going to take place and there was this

21 conversation about how he was going to tie up his hands

22 and so forth so on. But who was really running the show

23 in that case?

24 Does that mean he's not responsible and your decision

25 was incorrect? Absolutely not. You made the right

 9

1 decision, the only decision that we knew you were going to

2 make is that he's guilty of first degree murder. There's

3 no question about that.

4 The question you have to ask yourself individually --

5 this is an individual thing now, because I'm going to talk

6 to you about how we go through this process. And there's

7 going to be a verdict form that's pretty lengthy, 20

8 pages, where you have to make individual findings on a

9 whole bunch of things, and I'll talk to you about that at

10 the end.

11 But when you're talking about this heightened

12 premeditation, you now have been empowered with additional

13 information and additional facts, and now you've got to

14 start going back and kind of putting the puzzle together

15 and decide how is that going to play out in this

16 heightened premeditation, whether that aggravating factor

17 applies or not. And I suggest when you look at all the

18 facts and circumstances, that there wasn't this what we

19 call heightened level of premeditation or this substantial

20 period of reflection, that this was a process he was going

21 through.

22 I mean, he didn't want to be any part of the

23 stabbing. He didn't want to see blood. We know why he

24 didn't want to see blood now. I mean, this man spent 11

25 days in a trailer with five dead bodies and a child. How

 10

1 can you fathom that? Think about it. I mean, you have to

2 use your common sense. One of the things the judge is

3 going to tell you about is being able to use your common

4 sense.

5 How many times when someone commits a murder they

6 run, they flee, they hide, they try to cover it up, they

7 bury bodies? They do all these things that a person who

8 wants to try to get away with it is going to do. He did

9 none of those. He stayed for six hours with his wife

10 after he killed her. Accident or not, that's what he's

11 maintained. It really doesn't matter? It does. We'll

12 talk about why.

13 But 11 days this man was in a trailer. Imagine the

14 stench, the smell, the horror. Is there anybody but

15 someone who is completely mentally ill, mentally damaged

16 that would do that? You know that, the answer to that

17 question. And that gets to be part of the process as we

18 go through here, deciding whether you are going to

19 sanction his killing or whether he's going to spend the

20 rest of his life in prison.

21 Now, in jury selection we talked about all kinds of

22 things that probably you guys didn't understand. One of

23 the things we talked about was would you be able to

24 consider mitigation, even if you knew that someone had

25 committed multiple murders. I think five murders were out

 11

1 there, the attempted murder was out there. That was

2 talked about. And you all agreed that you could look at

3 everything and listen to everything.

4 And I can imagine that coming into this courtroom and

5 all of a sudden this responsibility is being thrust on you

6 and all of a sudden you seeing and hearing some of the

7 things that you heard must have been a shock beyond shock.

8 And in the middle of this we have a horror happening over

9 in Vegas, and I imagine people have that on their mind as

10 well.

11 MR. BUSTAMANTE: Objection, your Honor. He's arguing

12 facts not into evidence.

13 THE COURT: Sustained.

14 MR. LENAMON: You agreed you would put all of that

15 out of your mind and focus on this case and look at this

16 case and not base it on some kind of conjecture or your

17 own decision-making process outside of what your

18 responsibility is as an individual human being.

19 I mean, that's what we're talking about here. You as

20 a human being have a great responsibility here, and it's

21 individual. This doesn't and shouldn't be collective.

22 Technically you should all go back there and go, "Okay.

23 This is how I vote," and not have to explain it to

24 anybody. You don't have to explain your position to

25 anybody one way or the other.

 12

1 And I'm hoping that I will give some of you, one of

2 you -- because that's all it takes is one person on this

3 jury to say, "No, I'm not voting for death," and it's

4 over. He gets life. One person changes everything.

5 That's all it takes.

6 But I'm going to give you a lot of reasons and focus

7 on how to look at this so at the end of the day when you

8 go back there, you, number one, don't go, "Oh, that

9 lawyer, man, he's a slickster. He's really good at what

10 he does. But the bottom line is this guy's a killer and

11 we should put killers away on death row." I don't want

12 that to be part of your decision. I want you to look and

13 listen to what I'm going to tell you now and digest it,

14 and I'm hoping that it aids in your decision-making

15 process.

16 So the way we begin here is, what is most important

17 to understand, is that you're really making a decision on

18 one murder, and that is Mr. Rodriguez's murder. That's

19 what we're here for. If he is sentenced to death, he's

20 being sentenced to death only on Mr. Rodriguez's murder.

21 You hear me object when the prosecutor says something.

22 This is not about those five murders and attempted murder

23 that he deserves death or otherwise on those offenses.

24 This is only about Mr. Rodriguez's murder.

25 Now, you get to use those five murders and the

 13

1 attempted murder as what we call aggravating factors.

2 Okay. So before we get into the aggravating factors, this

3 is what you have to think about. Okay. You have to think

4 about Rodriguez's murder. You have to go through your

5 mind and think about how it went down. Because, remember,

6 we were arguing second degree murder, and you rejected it,

7 rightfully so. Second degree murder would have ended any

8 possibility of the death penalty. First degree murder is

9 the only charge where someone can get death in Florida.

10 But there a lot of different types of first degree

11 murders. We hear and see things every day on TV that just

12 tear us apart, that make us angry, how dare this. You

13 can't bring those in here. You have to put those aside.

14 You have to put your personal feelings aside about the

15 injustices that are going on in the world as we speak

16 today and you have to focus on Mr. Rodriguez's murder and

17 the process of how you make a decision whether he gets

18 life or death, and that needs to be your focus.

19 Now, I can tell you without question that the

20 legislature decided when they were going to have a death

21 penalty that they were never going to force a juror to

22 make a decision that was inconsistent with their personal

23 beliefs, their religious beliefs or so forth, as long as

24 they could follow the law. And so there's an important

25 provision in the jury instructions that says you are never

 14

1 required to vote for death, and I'm going to read this to

2 you in a second. He didn't cover it in his PowerPoint,

3 but this is in the jury instructions (indicating).

4 "The process of weighing aggravating factors and

5 mitigating circumstances is not a mechanical or a

6 mathematical process. In other words, you should not

7 merely total the number of aggravating factors and compare

8 that number to the total number of mitigating

9 circumstances. The law contemplates that different

10 factors or circumstances may be given different weight or

11 values by jurors."

12 What are they saying there? Individuals, you as

13 individuals make the decision on the aggravating factors,

14 whether they're proven beyond a reasonable doubt, whether

15 the weight you give them and whether they are

16 sufficient -- and we're going to talk about sufficiency in

17 a second -- whether there is sufficiency in aggravating

18 factors to move forward to the consideration of the

19 aggravating factors and then ultimately into the

20 mitigating factors and to the weighing process.

21 Therefore, in your decision-making process, each

22 individual juror must decide what weight is to be given to

23 a particular factor or circumstance. And here's the

24 important language: Regardless of the results of each

25 juror's individual weighing process, even if you find that

 15

1 sufficient aggravators outweigh mitigators, the law

2 neither compels nor requires you to determine that the

3 defendant should be sentenced to death. The law neither

4 compels nor requires you to determine that the defendant

5 should be sentenced to death.

6 We talked about this in jury selection. You are

7 never required to vote for death. So if you go back there

8 and there's eleven of you and one of you is standing alone

9 and the eleven are saying, "Listen, we have to send a

10 message to our community," or some other reason that you

11 as a juror come up with, the one juror is never required

12 and doesn't have to give you a reason.

13 The juror can actually say, "Yeah, I agree with you,

14 the aggravators were proven beyond a reasonable doubt,

15 they outweigh the mitigation, but I'm not going to vote

16 for death. I'm not going to kill this man. I have that

17 choice by law to make that decision."

18 So when we start with that process, we're looking

19 first at the aggravating factors that apply. There's one

20 aggravating factor that applies specifically to this case:

21 Cold, calculated, premeditated. That's what we talked

22 about in detail a few minutes ago. They're saying that he

23 had heightened premeditation, there was time to plan -- a

24 substantial period of time to plan. That's one of the

25 aggravating factors. Okay?

 16

1 The other aggravating factors are the 2003 murders

2 and the 2008 attempted murder. I'm going to throw five

3 boxes out here to represent the five murders and then, of

4 course, we have over here the attempted murder. Now, the

5 way they're set up in the instruction is they are

6 mentioned twice; once for the actual conviction of

7 violence -- this was a conviction of violence and this was

8 a capital case, and then a second set where he was under

9 sentence of imprisonment. So technically when this murder

10 occurred, he was under sentence of imprisonment at the

11 time for these things, and these are all aggravating

12 factors that can apply.

13 Now, an aggravating factor has to be proven beyond a

14 reasonable doubt. They were proven. No question. I'm

15 not going to insult your intelligence. This man committed

16 five murders and an attempted murder. They were proven

17 beyond a reasonable doubt. There's no question about

18 that.

19 This, I would suggest, was not. And I think if you

20 look at the facts and the evidence individually, as I

21 talked to you about, and I'm going to repeat myself, you

22 will understand why this hasn't been proven beyond a

23 reasonable doubt. (Indicating.)

24 So let's talk about the attempted murder. How do you

25 decide what weight to give those murders and how do you

 17

1 decide what weight to give the attempted murder? It's

2 complex, and I would suggest that you begin the journey by

3 the process what I consider this group of breadcrumbs that

4 have been laid before you.

5 We know -- I'm going to write on the back of this, if

6 I can. We know, as you heard from Dr. Holmes, that

7 there's a process that began years ago when I became

8 involved in the case --

9 MR. BUSTAMANTE: Your Honor, may we approach?

10 THE COURT: Yes.

11 (Bench conference.)

12 MR. BUSTAMANTE: Your Honor, the defense counsel is

13 writing on a piece of evidence that's going to go back

14 with the jury, so this is improper.

15 MR. LENAMON: Do we have another board? I'll figure

16 it out, Judge.

17 THE COURT: Okay.

18 (Bench conference concluded.)

19 MR. LENAMON: So we know at the beginning of this

20 case when Dr. Holmes testified, you found out that

21 Ms. O'Shea, mitigation specialist, she's a forensic social

22 worker, that she became involved in this case initially

23 sometime shortly after the murder in 2011 and that she

24 began the process of essentially collecting every piece of

25 information she could about William Wells.

 18

1 And Dr. Holmes told you that there's a lot of times

2 in these cases where you cannot talk to everybody because

3 there's a lot of people who aren't around. His father

4 wasn't around, his mother is senile. That was testified

5 by Dr. Holmes.

6 And you heard from the sister and the niece, and I'm

7 going to suggest to you that the niece was incorrect about

8 a few things. And if you listen to the sister's

9 testimony, she wasn't around most of the time. The sister

10 was 25 years older. She had her own life, and there were

11 periods of time that she was around but not a lot.

12 And I think the only concrete thing that you heard

13 about her being around was for a very short period of time

14 when he was doing well. I think he was 16 or 17, and then

15 he was yanked away by mom and dad, went with them and went

16 down to Mayport, and she was upset that she couldn't keep

17 him. Okay. But I would suggest that this woman loves her

18 brother and wants to help her brother out.

19 But we didn't put on any testimony that is incorrect

20 or fabricated or exaggerated. We gathered testimony

21 through lots and lots and lots of records, all of which

22 were provided to the State of Florida. They could have

23 provided them to a doctor to look at them and spent that

24 money we talked about to come in here and say, "No, Mr.

25 Wells does not have a history of psychiatric illnesses.

 19

1 No, he's not bipolar. No, he's not delusional. No, he

2 doesn't see maggots and remember his wife's death over and

3 over." They could have done that. They didn't do that.

4 I suggest because what we have is true, and they didn't

5 want to waste the time to do that.

6 But the mitigation investigation here involves

7 records and interviews and gathering evaluations, which

8 included part of the 2003 case. So although you heard

9 from three doctors here, you really heard from five,

10 because two of the doctors that were involved in the 2003

11 case, one of which is the State of Florida's -- not his

12 jurisdiction. That was in Jacksonville -- was a doctor

13 who said at the time of these murders he was under extreme

14 mental distress and emotional distress. That was one of

15 the doctors that Dr. Holmes referenced. There was also

16 Dr. Bordini, who a bunch of them referenced, including Dr.

17 Wu and Dr. Ross, because Dr. Bordini did the

18 neuropsychological testing, which showed back in 2003 he

19 had brain damage.

20 Now, there's always a fear as a lawyer who's trying

21 to save my client's life that jurors are going to say,

22 "Yeah, you know, he's really mentally ill, he's really

23 sick, but, you know what? I don't know if we can ever

24 help him. I don't know if we can ever help him. What am

25 I gonna do as a juror?"
 20

1 We talked about this in jury selection. We talked

2 about what your responsibilities are and that you're not

3 going to make a decision based on your belief that you

4 have to make the Department of Corrections safe. You

5 cannot make your decision on that. I would suggest you

6 don't have to worry about that, because we know from

7 testimony, for the last six years Mr. Wells, since this

8 incident happened, has done well in a structured

9 environment.

10 And corrections clearly knows what has to be done,

11 and they do their job. They're good at doing their job

12 sometimes. Everybody is bad at doing their job sometimes,

13 even me. I've lost lots of cases, but I learned from my

14 mistakes. They learned from their mistake. And I would

15 suggest that Mr. Wells is going to do just fine and that

16 we don't have to worry about it. But you can't worry

17 about it anyway, because you promised me you will not make

18 a decision based on that. You will only make the decision

19 on what we're going to talk about in a few minutes.

20 So when we're looking at these breadcrumbs and we're

21 talking about these breadcrumbs, we're talking about that

22 we did this substantial investigation, and Dr. Holmes came

23 up here and told you about it. Now, you know she talked

24 to Mr. Wells. She told you she talked to Mr. Wells

25 numerous times, so he's a source of this information. And

 21

1 I would suggest to you he's a very reliable source.

2 There's one thing if -- and I think there's at least

3 one juror who's in the medical profession on the jury.

4 There's one thing if you are motivated to malinger, to

5 fake. You have a motivation to fake. And doctors look at

6 that and they do testing, and each of these doctors

7 testified that he was putting forth his best effort and

8 there was no malingering.

9 But I would suggest a man who kind of subconsciously

10 wants to die, who wants to find a way to death row is not

11 going to give information that is what we consider

12 favorable mitigation. I would suggest that the

13 information we gathered about Mr. Wells and his

14 childhood -- and it was not super horrific. It was not

15 super horrific.

16 We don't know, other than what we have found out

17 about this father -- and I take issue with the prosecutor,

18 because Dr. Holmes said there were times when this man was

19 trying to be a father. I mean, he certainly took this

20 child -- I don't know what his motivations were or what

21 drove him to do it, but he took this child from this

22 prostitute who he was having an affair with and decided to

23 raise it. He didn't have to do that, so there's something

24 good about it.

25 But we know there's a lot of people who are good and

 22

1 still damaged. I mean, look at Mr. Wells. When I was

2 cross-examining Mr. Rodriguez's mother -- I mean, I have a

3 job to do, and I try not to cross the line, and I was

4 asking her because I thought it was important that her

5 son -- you know, the state came up here and said -- and

6 I'll talk to you about victim impact evidence in a little

7 while.

8 But she came up here and talked about her son, and,

9 you know, what a horror to lose a child. We all have

10 children, and so I understand why she was crying. I

11 understand the pain that she's feeling. And I understand

12 that we are presenting Mr. Rodriguez -- it is the state's

13 job to try to present him in a light most favorable, but

14 you as the jury have to be given all the tools to

15 understand things like he had committed a robbery with a

16 firearm and that's why he was at Florida State Prison.

17 And if you remember back when I was cross-examining

18 her and she was crying, he got up and told me to stop, to

19 stop doing that. What is that? Is that humanity? What?

20 Is that some part of him that he has inside him that is

21 good?

22 The father could have had things inside him that were

23 good, but we know people when they drink. And he was old

24 school, I mean, he was 50 years old when he became a

25 father, already an alcohol problem, already this incident

 23

1 with these two people that he had killed. So is there

2 good in him? There is. But we're not looking at him,

3 we're not judging him, we're not here to judge the father.

4 We're here to judge the son. And how do we judge the son

5 if we don't know what he had to go through?

6 And so he had a father he loved. He wanted him to

7 love. He was devastated when his father died. He never

8 stopped loving his father. How many people do we know

9 that never stop loving their parents no matter what? But

10 what we needed to do is to understand the things that

11 happened to him that changed who he was, that affected who

12 he was.

13 And really the launching point for all of that is in

14 2003 in the moments when he kills his wife and then

15 proceeds to kill his father-in-law and his brother-in-law

16 and the two other people. That's really the launching

17 point for all of this. How do we get to a point where a

18 man does what he did and is who he is and spends 11 days

19 in a home stenching with five bodies?

20 So the journey that we took with Dr. Holmes was that

21 this was a man who was abused as a child, and we had a

22 couple of instances of abuse, including the burns. Was he

23 burned and horribly burned every day? Absolutely not. We

24 don't have any proof of that. But he was treated

25 terribly, so terribly that it caused a condition known as

 24

1 posttraumatic stress syndrome. It's a psychiatric

2 condition.

3 And so because the cousin or the niece or whoever she

4 was didn't see it or the sister wasn't around for it, does

5 it mean it didn't happen? Absolutely not. I would

6 suggest if you look at the breadcrumbs that were laying

7 around, even the sister, who seemed to favor the father

8 over the mother -- you heard her talk about the mother.

9 There was venom flowing about the mother. She didn't have

10 those things to say about the father. She was in a

11 different relationship with the father than he was. She

12 had left home when he was born -- before he was born, and

13 through all those years she saw him sporadically. She

14 wasn't living in the house. She was raising her own

15 family.

16 And so is this the kind of case where the abuse is so

17 horrific that, you know, it's surprising that DCF didn't

18 get involved? No. This is the kind of case where there

19 were breadcrumbs that showed us that his father mistreated

20 him when he drank, he mistreated him really badly, that

21 his father was of a mindset that he shot him in the foot

22 for pissing in his pants. That's who the father was.

23 And so we're looking at what happens to him where the

24 father is giving him alcohol when he's four years old, and

25 you could imagine. We hear Benadryl, that's the whiskey

 25

1 of today. The parents give their kids a little Benadryl

2 and calm them down, put them to sleep. He wasn't giving

3 him whiskey so he could get drunk. He had an ADD problem.

4 He was taking Ritalin at three. I mean, severe

5 hyperactivity. It makes sense his father was giving him

6 liquor to calm him down.

7 And then at some point this boy, now a man, sees his

8 father drinking and maybe has some kind of proclivity

9 because of genetics. And we talked about the genetic

10 proclivity that exists from Dr. Holmes. So he starts

11 drinking when he's 12, 13 years old all the time, so much

12 that we had two doctors come in here and tell you that he

13 had brain damage.

14 And Dr. Ross, unlike what the prosecutor said about

15 these different colors, came here, a neurologist from

16 Johns Hopkins University who did some internship at

17 Harvard University. He's a medical doctor who practices,

18 who conducted this complex quantitative qEEG, which he

19 explained to you and showed you that with the eyes open

20 there was an indication of the brain damage and that he

21 believed it was because of the alcohol exposure that he

22 had suffered over the years.

23 And we went back and forth on those. The yellow,

24 that's normal. He's the one who brought it up. That's

25 William's test when he was reading. That's normal. But

 26

1 with his eyes closed, you see this damage. This is a test

2 done by a neurologist. They could have done all the tests

3 all day long if they wanted. They didn't.

4 And then Dr. Wu came in and told you that he had

5 brain damage. And there was an inference that because of

6 a typo on a report -- and I don't know, maybe this 40-plus

7 pages I asked him to pare down so we can get to the point.

8 Really, the point is you don't need that 20 pages. We as

9 lawyers have to be conscientious about jurors' attention

10 and their focus, and if I get put to sleep at 60 pages and

11 this is my job, you're clearly going to be put to sleep.

12 Maybe the one person who's in the medical profession would

13 love it, to see that, but we pared it down.

14 And the basic thing was he got convicted. We didn't

15 spend the money until after he was convicted on Dr. Wu.

16 We didn't spend the money until after he was convicted on

17 Dr. Wu. We knew that we would have to go right into a

18 penalty phase.

19 But between the time that he got convicted and the

20 time we came back in front of you, he was transported to

21 this place to get a PET scan done. The PET scan was done,

22 it was sent to California by Federal Express, Dr. Wu got

23 it, he told you he visually looked at it, he put it in his

24 database, or whatever he does, and he made the

25 determination it was brain damage. These are the

 27

1 breadcrumbs that all lead up.

2 Now, there's some suggestion that this was done way

3 after the 2003 case. So what? He's not here for the 2003

4 case. The problem with his argument is, is Dr. Bordini, a

5 69-page report, did a neuropsychological on him, and he

6 was brain damaged then. Brain damaged then; brain damaged

7 now. So these are all the pieces of crumbs that were

8 given to you.

9 You also heard when he's in a structure he does well.

10 He went to this school when he was 16 or 17, always

11 laughing. Man, I wish we could find a structure to keep

12 him there like that. He's always laughing. He's not

13 laughing now. He wants to die. He wants you to kill him.

14 This is suicide. He wants you to kill him. I'll be

15 honest, he wants you to kill him. I've had to fight to

16 get this far with Mr. Wells. Don't do it.

17 So let's get back to what we were talking about on

18 the aggravating factors. I talked to you about the

19 breadcrumbs. So the way you start evaluating these

20 aggravating factors is you have to decide, A, if they're

21 proven beyond a reasonable doubt and, B, whether they are

22 sufficient.

23 Now, there's no definition for sufficiency in these,

24 but it's a finding you're going to have to make on the

25 jury instructions. It's on the second page, and it reads,

 28

1 after you make a decision -- we had talked about this is

2 the box, as the prosecutor referred to. After you make a

3 decision whether each of these aggravating factors, and

4 there's three, one is previously convicted of a felony and

5 under sentence of imprisonment. That has to do with the

6 five murders and the attempted murder. Two, was

7 previously convicted of another capital felony or a felony

8 using the threat of violence to another person. That's

9 the attempted murder. And three, the first degree murder

10 was committed in a cold, calculated and premeditated

11 manner without any pretense of moral or legal

12 justification.

13 So those are the aggravating factors. There's three

14 boxes. You would say yes, yes, no. Okay? I'm telling

15 you, you can put yes on the first two because there's no

16 question that these murders were proven beyond a

17 reasonable doubt.

18 The more complicated issue gets to the sufficiency,

19 and it says, "In reviewing the aggravating factors that we

20 unanimously found to be established beyond a reasonable

21 doubt in section A above, we the jury also unanimously

22 find that the aggravating factors are sufficient to

23 warrant a possible sentence of death."

24 Okay. So I went looking for a definition of

25 sufficiency this morning, and Webster's says, "Sufficiency

 29

1 is enough of that thing to achieve a purpose or to fulfill

2 a need." So essentially what you have to do as an

3 individual juror is you have to decide whether all of this

4 stuff -- after I talk to you I'm going to explain the

5 process and the weighing and all that other stuff and how

6 to look at it -- whether those are sufficient, all of

7 those are sufficient to move to the next step.

8 And what I suggest is that the sufficiency goes to

9 you individually and that you may not find, based on your

10 belief in the murder that's being played out, Mr.

11 Rodriguez's murder, all the facts, now all the mental

12 health issues that are coming into play, and the fact that

13 after I talked to you about these aggravating factors,

14 that you say, yeah, there's a big number, a lot of

15 murders, but this guy was A, this guy was B, this guy was

16 C, whatever your feelings are, that you can say as a juror

17 I don't find that sufficient, I don't find the aggravating

18 sufficient. That's up to you. You have to make a

19 decision on that.

20 The next step then is to go to the mitigating

21 factors, and there's a list of the mitigating factors.

22 And the mitigating factors have to be proven to a lesser

23 extent than beyond a reasonable doubt. They call it

24 greater weight of the evidence. And you get to decide

25 individually as to each mitigating factor and whether it

 30

1 was proven to a greater -- and the language is to the

2 greater weight of the evidence, whether each mitigating

3 factor was proven to the greater weight of the evidence.

4 And then what the instruction is going to require you

5 to do is go through each mitigating factor individually,

6 whether it was proven to a greater weight of the evidence,

7 and then do a count and put the number down. So, in other

8 words, if you find that he suffered from mental illness,

9 ten of you believe that, two don't, or five of you believe

10 that, seven don't, whatever the number is, you're going to

11 do a count and you're going to put that down, and that's

12 going to be for every mitigating factor that comes into

13 play, and there's 60 of them. It's going to take you some

14 time to go through all the mitigating factors and vote on

15 those, and we'll talk more about that in a minute.

16 I want to get back to this. Okay. So when I was

17 talking to Dr. Holmes, one of the things that I talked to

18 Dr. Holmes about was the victims in this case and the

19 victims in the attempted murder and the victim in the

20 murder case. And the reason why I talked to Dr. Holmes

21 about that was that in every one of the murders, except

22 for the wife, including the attempted murder and Mr.

23 Rodriguez's murder, there was some sort of betrayal that

24 Mr. Wells felt towards each of the victims. There was

25 some connection. He's not randomly killing people.

 31

1 As a matter of fact, we know from hearing about this,

2 and I talked to Detective Smith about this on

3 cross-examination, that there are people that come and go

4 from the house during the 11 days that he's sitting there

5 with those bodies, 11 days, including his stepdaughter,

6 who he sends away. He keeps his four-year-old son, Frog,

7 who you heard he would bring to -- he would take back to

8 the school where he had gone.

9 Now, remember, the state, they didn't really make a

10 big deal about this, because they couldn't, but he was in

11 a dropout program. This is what he was in. He was in a

12 dropout program. So imagine, what does this mean? How do

13 you get to a place where you're in a dropout program where

14 he is always laughing and joking and he's doing what he

15 wants to do? He's a shrimper. He wants to be on boats.

16 You heard the incident where he got a hook in his mouth.

17 This is where he's at during this structured period of

18 time where he does well.

19 And if there's any suggestion that that's evidence to

20 show that he doesn't suffer from mental illness, I would

21 suggest that's completely wrong, because we know for a

22 fact that he was diagnosed on multiple occasions with

23 bipolar illness, schizoaffective illness, hyperactivity,

24 bipolar disorder with psychotic features, posttraumatic

25 stress disorder, depressive disorder, major depression

 32

1 with psychotic features. Those were from records,

2 records. He attempted to commit suicide multiple times.

3 He couldn't get the help he needed. At some point he

4 couldn't get the medication he needed, and this is all

5 before the 2003 murders.

6 But we know that he brought his child to visit. His

7 child was important to him. He hasn't seen him since that

8 day, that horrific day back in 2003, but his child was

9 important to him. He would bring him to the high school.

10 You heard a little bit of an anecdote from the teacher,

11 the principal, something with the fish, do things with the

12 fish.

13 So the reason I brought this issue up about the

14 individuals who were killed in this case is because that

15 is something -- that is one thing you get to consider in

16 the context of the weight you give each of these

17 aggravating factors. Weight becomes important here.

18 Weight becomes important to sufficiency, which we've

19 talked about where you make an evaluation about whether

20 all of these are sufficient in light of all of what's

21 going on.

22 But if you get past sufficiency, it becomes an issue

23 of your individual decision when you're weighing the

24 aggravating circumstances versus the mitigating

25 circumstances. And I would suggest here that what we had

 33

1 take place was that, with the killing of his wife, he said

2 it was an accident. There's nothing to refute that it was

3 an accident other than he pled to first degree murder.

4 Now, we look ahead to what happens. He gets arrested

5 for all kinds of murders, he's psychotic, he wants to die,

6 he wants the death penalty. Something happens that

7 changes his mind and something happens where the State of

8 Florida decides they're going to offer him life sentences,

9 so they're not even death penalty sentences that they

10 offer. They take death off the table. What does that

11 tell you?

12 You heard a lot about the circumstances surrounding

13 this and now you know about his mental illness. He had

14 those mental illnesses back then. He had Bordini and the

15 state's doctor saying that this guy was clearly disturbed

16 psychotically when this happened.

17 So now you are in a position as a juror, an

18 individual juror, where you get to decide what weight do I

19 give these murders? Appropriately, you could do anything

20 you want. You could say, "Listen, five murders are bad.

21 You know, when I first heard of this, I thought A, B, C,

22 but I've looked at this, I see this, the fact that he got

23 life sentences, he was mentally ill, there were doctors

24 involved, and all of this stuff happened and he got sent

25 to prison, I'm not going to give them a lot of weight.

 34

1 I'm not going to give those murders a lot of weight." You

2 can do that generally, any way you want, or you can take

3 it one step further.

4 You can eliminate and give no weight or very little

5 weight to the wife. This was the accident. He held her

6 for six hours. He wishes -- he says, "I'm going to rot in

7 hell." He was crying and wished she would come back. So

8 you can give that any weight you want, and then you can

9 move to the others.

10 Each of those four murders involves some kind of

11 betrayal on some level that he felt; wrong, right or

12 indifferent. There's no justification from these lips to

13 you, to your soul, that these murders are anything but

14 first degree murder. He deserves the sentence he's

15 getting. He deserves to be locked up and never get out.

16 But that's not what we're talking about here. We're

17 talking about what was going on in his mind when he

18 committed these murders.

19 And we know that the first murder was the

20 brother-in-law, who had come into the house, found the

21 body and was going for a gun and that he had previous

22 issues with the brother-in-law and that he shot him in the

23 head. First degree murder. No question.

24 But now you're looking below the surface at that

25 aggravating factor and thinking, okay, so now I know he

 35

1 got life on that case because he pled to life. I know

2 that there was some kind of conflict that existed between

3 the brother, but although it wasn't justified, it clearly

4 is a first degree murder, that I have to consider that and

5 the weight of that aggravating factor, and I also know

6 that there was a lot of things going on leading up to this

7 that caused this perfect storm, and you heard them. And

8 it really began with the death of his stepchild two years

9 before.

10 You heard that his wife, Tootie, had two

11 stepchildren, which he treated as his own. So he has

12 these two stepchildren. He loves them. He's a fisherman.

13 He's trying to make his marriage work. There's problems

14 in his marriage already. And she goes down -- he's got

15 his son now, Frog, who's an infant. He goes down and --

16 maybe two, I think he was at the time. The wife goes down

17 and she's crossing the street or the kids are crossing the

18 street and, boom, the kid dies. This is his stepchild.

19 And you heard from there it just goes crazy.

20 At some point they move to Georgia and they're living

21 in a roach-infested trailer, they're fighting all the

22 time, there is infidelity between both of them going back

23 and forth, he's going back into his addictive ways, so you

24 can imagine the storm is brewing. The storm is brewing.

25 That storm brewing is another factor that you get to put

 36

1 in each of these aggravating factors of how you weigh

2 those aggravating factors.

3 So we have a storm brewing, this infidelity, his

4 mind, who we know bipolar, schizoaffective, posttraumatic

5 stress. He's got all of these things. He had tried to

6 commit suicide on multiple occasions. All of these things

7 brewing that lead up to this event.

8 And then the second victim is his father-in-law. And

9 his father-in-law he had conflict with so much that he was

10 Baker Acted after an argument with his father-in-law.

11 Baker Acted means he was involuntarily hospitalized.

12 Going back to when he was 17 and he had an anxiety attack,

13 which I don't believe was an anxiety attack, he was

14 hospitalized then too.

15 But now the father-in-law shows up and there's this

16 conflict with him, and he's trying to explain it. I mean,

17 there's no explanation. How mentally ill, a man who

18 killed two people, his son and his daughter, there's no

19 explanation. And whatever happens, he kills him. And

20 when he kills him, he says he was going for a knife. No

21 justification for that. But these are the things that you

22 get to put in the aggravating factors when you look at

23 them. And then after that it really goes crazy. At that

24 point is when he starts using cocaine in phenomenally

25 large amounts.
 37

1 And the next two killings, the guy who he believed

2 was the person who had slept with his wife or was having

3 an affair with his wife, he invited over. And he claimed

4 he was going for something in his bag, I think it was. I

5 asked the detective about that. And he killed him.

6 And when he killed that fourth guy he was using all

7 these drugs. He doesn't put the people in the car to try

8 to hide them. He puts them in this small trailer that he

9 was living with his four-year-old child. His

10 four-year-old child is in the house. Now, he tells the

11 detective he thinks his four-year-old child may have heard

12 one of the shots. But he's trying to hide these bodies

13 from everybody, and I think there was some testimony about

14 tape on the doors. Horrific. And so this man, whether

15 it's day four or five, kills another person, and then he

16 kills the drug dealer who he's buying all these drugs off

17 of. Eleven days he's in that trailer.

18 And I would suggest that you can take all of the

19 mitigation that we have talked about and you can put those

20 in the boxes involving each one of these victims; the

21 mitigation involving the events leading up to the killing,

22 the 2001 death of his child, this horrible kind of

23 whirlwind thing that's happening between him and his wife,

24 the drug use preceding the event and then the drug use

25 that followed the killing with the fourth and fifth

 38

1 person, his mental illness, his childhood trauma.

2 He is the person that he became because of what

3 happened to him. We know we have people in our lives who

4 have uphill battles. They go against all the odds and

5 they do very well. We have siblings sometimes, and Dr.

6 Holmes talked about that, one will turn out really good

7 and one will turn out really bad.

8 But whatever was William Wells, from the genetic

9 creation of him with his mother, who is the prostitute and

10 may have had some kids who also had some mental health or

11 whatever, but they appeared they were both wearing glasses

12 at a very young age, we don't know. We can't say. But

13 you can consider all of this to the trauma that he

14 suffered as a child, to the brain that was -- the brain

15 damage that was caused not by a choice he made but by

16 events that transpired into childhood, beginning at 4 and

17 into 12, 13 and 14, all of those things you can consider

18 when you're weighing the aggravating factors in this case

19 in determining what weight to give them.

20 And in the attempted murder case, you heard he had a

21 rationale that this guy was betraying him and a roommate,

22 that he was snitching on him. This is prison, folks.

23 Now, five days before that he was in a mental health

24 portion of the prison, five days. We know he was

25 consistently on medication. Some of it worked; some of it

 39

1 may not have worked. But, again, we have a situation

2 where he's not just picking someone out and doing this.

3 And you heard me with the detective go back and

4 forth. There's nothing in that statement about the death

5 penalty. That comes after. It was in May, though, which

6 explains, as Dr. Holmes talked about, this horrific cycle

7 that occurs that began with this. I mean, imagine someone

8 suffering from posttraumatic stress syndrome and then they

9 kill somebody. Okay? We know in our society that we have

10 people who fight for our country, go overseas, and how it

11 affects them. And a lot of those kids, they come from

12 good families, normal, strong, and they still are

13 suffering. They're still battling with that issue today,

14 getting them the help they need.

15 But here is someone who is already damaged by many,

16 many, many things. And then he suffers this horror of

17 where he can't get out of his mind the killing of his wife

18 and he has these hallucinations, these flashbacks of the

19 maggots. Is he making that up? She was in that trailer

20 for 11 days. How many times did Billy go in and see his

21 wife over that 11-day period?

22 So we have this huge trauma that occurs in May. And

23 so you heard Dr. Holmes talk about in May it's a different

24 time for him because he's flashing back, reliving back to

25 the memory. And it's interesting -- and, you know, this

 40

1 is something for you to look at and consider. It's

2 interesting how he had all three of these events -- or two

3 of these events occur in May, both the attempted murder

4 and Mr. Rodriguez's death.

5 And, again, with this, with the attempted murder, you

6 get to consider all the things that we talked about, all

7 the things that were happening in giving whatever weight

8 you decide to give it. And you can use mitigation and

9 everything in his life, and should, to become part of the

10 weighing process of the mitigation.

11 Now, when I say that here, I'm not talking about

12 weighing yet. I'm talking about taking all the

13 mitigation -- and I use the word "mitigation," because we

14 can call it a lot of things; his mental health background,

15 life experiences, the trauma he suffered with his father,

16 trauma in childhood. All of those things, all the things

17 that we have talked about, the brain damage, the alcohol

18 damage that was caused to his brain, you can take all that

19 stuff here and use it to offset the weight of the

20 five -- the six aggravating factors.

21 After you reach that conclusion where you're going to

22 fall on that, again, assuming you get past sufficiency,

23 then you're going to look to the mitigation, and there's

24 going to be 60 pieces of mitigation. Now, we pretty much

25 put out everything there. You have to decide what has

 41

1 been proven in your mind by greater weight of the

2 evidence, which is a lesser standard than beyond a

3 reasonable doubt. They hold the mitigation to a lesser

4 standard than aggravation because, obviously, aggravation

5 is being used to enhance death, and so they use a lesser

6 standard with mitigation. It's called greater weight of

7 the evidence. And you can give it -- once you find it,

8 you can then give each piece of mitigation, there's 60 of

9 them, whatever weight you desire to give.

10 And so, for example, let's say you came to a

11 conclusion of what the aggravation is in this case and

12 what it weighs. And actually, there's -- yeah, you also

13 have the CCP, which I'm arguing doesn't exist, but that

14 would be the seven pieces of aggravation. Once you decide

15 what mitigation applies, you get to give it whatever

16 weight you want to individually or collectively.

17 Individually or collectively.

18 So, for example, I'm just going to throw it out

19 there, let's say that you believe that the brain damage is

20 the most compelling thing to you. You listened to Dr.

21 Wu's testimony, you listened to Dr. Ross's testimony, you

22 believe that that's the most compelling thing and that is

23 very heavy in your mind. You give that a lot of weight.

24 You can find that one mitigating factor outweighs all the

25 aggravation. One mitigating factor can outweigh all the

 42

1 aggravation.

2 But you also have the collective process, and that is

3 when you look at everything that we've talked about for

4 the last hour or so in his life and that was testified by

5 our experts and his family, and you could collectively

6 take all of that and collectively all of that could

7 outweigh the aggravation, collectively. You may have 3

8 pieces, you may have 10 pieces, you may have 12 pieces or

9 15 pieces. You can give it whatever weight you want to

10 determine whether the mitigation outweighs the

11 aggravation, and I would suggest that the mitigation is

12 substantial.

13 And I would suggest that the mitigating circumstances

14 here not only outweigh individually and collectively, I

15 would say the mitigation outweighs collectively any

16 aggravation. But the mitigation also brings down the

17 weight that is assigned to the aggravating factors. But

18 it doesn't end there, because, by law, if you find that

19 the aggravating circumstances outweigh the mitigating

20 circumstances, you still do not have to vote for death,

21 and the law says that.

22 This is what we talked about in jury selection.

23 These are the rules (indicating). And we've gone through

24 here -- up to here about weighing the aggravating factors

25 versus the mitigating factors. And regardless of your

 43

1 findings, you are neither compelled nor required to vote

2 for death ever. That's the rules. That's the law.

3 You're going to get an instruction that says exactly that,

4 exactly, and I read that to you already.

5 You know, we talked about this in regards to the

6 aggravating factors, but this is kind of what I was

7 mentioning when we were talking about the Mayport case,

8 when we were looking at the mitigation, the history of

9 trauma, the untreated mental illness, the fear of

10 abandonment and losing his son, and the infidelity and

11 betrayal, and that led to the initial killing his wife and

12 then ultimately to the killing of his father-in-law and

13 brother-in-law and the two other people.

14 And here we had testimony about how he had been

15 treated five days before. He suffered from depression,

16 obviously the mental illness that has carried all along,

17 and, again, the betrayal and trust I suggest is something

18 that we see here. The betrayal and trust is that he

19 believes that this guy is snitching on his friend who's

20 bringing in -- the mother's bringing in contraband. So I

21 would suggest when you look at the weight of those

22 aggravating factors, that that's something that you need

23 to consider.

24 I put that timeline up there just for you. That's in

25 evidence. You can take it back there with you. It

 44

1 describes the time period from the time he was born

2 through age 35, I think it is.

3 I want to talk a little bit about victim impact

4 evidence. You heard from Mr. Xavier Rodriguez's mother

5 who testified basically the uniqueness of her son, which

6 we as a community, it's very important, and that's why we

7 have this rule that applies to victims in these kind of

8 cases. But the rule also requires that you cannot

9 consider that victim impact evidence in your determination

10 of whether Mr. Wells gets death or not.

11 And the rule reads, "You may not consider this

12 evidence as an aggravating factor. Your decisions must be

13 based on the aggravating factors, the mitigating

14 circumstances, and the weighing process upon which you

15 have been instructed."

16 If there's any facts that I have left out, I

17 apologize. I obviously don't -- have not covered

18 everything.

19 You know, in closing, I just want to remind you that

20 when you leave here and you go back, the power that each

21 of you has as individuals is unique and clearly something

22 that is going to stay with you forever in your decision.

23 And you have been very attentive with all of us, the

24 judge, myself and the prosecutor, over the last month, and

25 I really appreciate it, your attentiveness.

 45

1 I'm reminded of a story of a great man who had gone

2 to some location, and while he was there the people in the

3 community brought someone to him and said, you know, this

4 person broke the law and needs to pay. And what I got out

5 of that story was that that man told them to look inside

6 themselves. And all the stuff that we've talked about,

7 you can look inside yourself. You could find mercy, you

8 could forgive William Wells, you can do whatever you want.

9 That's your decision. No one in this courtroom can

10 interfere with that. No one on this jury can interfere

11 with that.

12 Thank you.

13 * * *

14 (Excerpt concluded.)

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3 C E R T I F I C A T E

5 STATE OF FLORIDA )

6 COUNTY OF ALACHUA )

7 I do hereby certify that I was authorized to and did

8 stenographically report the foregoing proceedings, pages

9 numbered 1 through 45, and that the transcript is a true and

10 correct record of my stenographic notes.

11 Dated this 17th day of October, 2017.

12

13 ________________________________
Pamela S. Connor
14 Registered Professional Reporter
Florida Professional Reporter
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