Christian Maroney (4:48)

Yeah, I mean, so it's certainly not a victory, right? We wanted to hear a not guilty verdict, and that's the only thing that we would have accepted as victory in this case. But it's also not a loss. You know, he's not been convicted. We get the chance to go to another trial if the. If the state decides to. To retry it. So it's not a loss, but it's not a win. And, you know, we're. We're ready to go again whenever, whenever the time comes. Obviously, it's not the best feeling in the world to, to have a mistrial, but it's, you know, not the worst feeling in the world either. Much, much better than when the jury having come back with a guilty verdict. So, you know, the feeling is somewhere in the middle.

Roy Ramos (5:28)

I understand that you did not necessarily get to present the defense that you wanted to present. I've been following the trial a bit pretrial. You were trying to introduce some alternate theories of the case. I mean, I think it's somewhat remarkable that you got a. I don't want to say a positive outcome, but you got the outcome you got. Despite the fact that you were not allowed to present the defense you wanted to. What were some of the things that you would have presented as a defense had they been admissible? And why weren't they admissible?

Christian Maroney (5:59)

Yes. So, I mean, we did get to present the defense we wanted, broadly speaking. Right. We argued to the jury that Rashawn Jones was not responsible. The thing that we weren't able to get into and the thing we weren't able to present to the jury were third party culpability theories. Other people who may have been responsible, other people's names who came up during the investigation that weren't looked into sufficiently who could have been responsible for this crime. One of them. There's sort of two or three categories of these alternative theories that we wanted to get into. The first had to do with a fight that happened at a club in the summer of 2006. So there was information in the police report, and it seemed like as the police were interviewing witnesses in this case, this is the thing that consistently came up with every person that they spoke to at the beginning of this investigation. And there was a fight that happened at a club between Brian Pata. Willie Williams is another football player. There were another couple football players from the University of Miami there as well. And then Brian's brother Fentanyl. They were on one side of an altercation, and then on the other side of the altercation were some individuals who were known to be involved in some gang activity. The Westside Boys Gang was what's named in the. In the reports. And two individuals are named specifically as being involved in that fight and being involved with that gang. And this wasn't, you know, a normal fight. There were accounts of this fight starting inside the club, making its way outside the club. Somebody got their neck cut with. With a knife or with a razor. Somebody was hit in the head with a pipe. It was a serious, serious altercation. And then at the end of the fight, one of the. One of the two people who were named, who were said to be affiliated with this gang looked over to Brian Pata and Willie Williams in that group and said, we're going to get you. We're coming to get you. And that's where it starts. And then a few weeks later, Willie Williams One of the other football players who was involved reaches out to Brian and says that he heard from three individuals he names. Brandon Ash is the only full name that he gives. Then he gives two other names, Tony, a first name only and then a third name also first name only. And says three people have called him and said that there is a hit out on himself and on Brian Pata as a result of this fight. Now some time goes on, there's some, some accounts and reports that they sort of thought it was squashed, that, that this hit was taken care of for a period of time. And then sometime in the middle of October, the Brian gets a call from Willie Williams as well on the speaker next telephone and his girlfriend overhears this where Willie Williams says, hey man, I thought you said that these hits were, were taken care of, that we had no further issues. But I'm still hearing that there's a hit out on us. And at this point, and as far as the report goes, Brian's girlfriend Jada says that he gets visibly nervous. He says, you know, I thought I took care of it. I just saw him, there were no problems. And then makes a comment to, to his girlfriend about how he wants to change his license plate because he's worried about this. This is something he takes seriously. And according to the information from the reports and the information that we got during this case, that was sometime in the middle of Oct. So about three weeks before the, the murder. Now following this, there were two individuals who made confessions. There was one person who made a confession to a confidential informant from ICE and another individual who made a confession to his, his cellmate in jail. Both of these individuals said that they were hired to perform this murder as a hit. It was a hit that they were paid for. Which links up with the information that Willie Williams was given that Jada had overheard that stems back to this, this fight at the club. One of these individuals, they both specifically named Brian Pat as the person that they, that they were paid to kill. One of them was known to have a.38 caliber handgun that came from the individual who was the confidential informant at ice. And the firearms analyst in this case testified that the projectile taken from Brian Pata was consistent with a.38 caliber projectile. So that's another link. And we learned sort of right before the trial started because we just got a response from ice like the day before we were supposed to proceed with opening, responding to a letter that we sent asking them for a limited deposition about this individual and this confidential informant. And another thing we learned was that the confidential. The person who confessed his name was Willner Yinthi to this confidential informant also told him that he was practicing voodoo, he was doing some voodoo type rituals at the grave site and told this confidential informant where he would find these certain items that were related to these, these voodoo rituals. And then the ICE agent went out, looked exactly in the spot where the confidential informant told him these things would be. He finds these things and reports, you know, reports it, writes it in his.

Roy Ramos (11:33)

That's interesting. Tries to get a hold of the espn. The original ESPN investigation opens in a very eerie scene. Brian Pat, his mother and I think his sister basically digging up the body and, and moving it to a secret location. In part because these rituals and these artifacts were found in the area with Pat, his name like on a bottle or something. So this all seems consistent with the evidence. It's my understanding, Sarah, that the jury did not hear about any of these alternative theories or alleged confessions. And as Christian just mentioned, you may have struggled to get some records or information about them. He said, like on the eve of trial you got this information from ice. Were there any other issues with discovery and attempting to get records? Obviously ESPN got a bunch of records and then they stopped getting records. So did you guys have a similar struggle with getting the information you needed, the evidence you needed to go to trial?

Sarah Alvarez (12:30)

I mean, that would be the understatement of the century. So to date we're still getting new information and it's not even from the state. The information that we're getting now, it's connection in connection with public records requests, which is ultimately how we had to go about getting the discovery in this case because very little was turned over to us. And so just like Christian mentioned with the whole ICE agent debacle that came out after the jury had already been sworn and it was obviously, you know, huge, obviously very potentially exculpatory evidence. We weren't able to get into it anyway. But as you know, the defense, we have a right to prepare our defense to use that information to find evidence that could be admissible in court. And throughout we have been, you know, fronted from pursuing, pursuing those avenues

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Roy Ramos (17:08)

So I also understand this case got a little heated. There was some footage that came out of. It was a. It was a recorded trial, if not televised live, obviously, but there was raised voices between you guys, the prosecution, you guys, and the judge. And you attempted, I think, on multiple occasions to get the judge removed. Why? And what happened with that?

Sarah Alvarez (17:32)

Yeah, so that definitely was not our finest hour in that video. But things had been boiling, coming to a head for a long time. The first time that we tried to get the judge disqualified was after a series of hearings where we felt that not so much the rulings that were actually being made, although we clearly took issue with those as well. But the way in which both sides were being treated, just to say this as diplomatically as possible, it just did not feel like there was a neutral arbiter in the courtroom. And so we moved to disqualify. That didn't work out. The second time was because the judge said to Rashawn when she was asking him whether he wanted to accept the state's plea or whether he wanted to make any other offer, and that, you know, it's pretty significant that he was being essentially asked repeatedly if he would make a plea to the court and she would allow him to potentially plead no contest instead of admit guilt in a murder case, this murder case. And so during that interaction, after he clearly asserted that he wanted to go to trial, he said, deep in my heart, I know that I'm innocent. The only thing that I would accept is a dismissal. The judge then said to him, well, okay, if you roll the dice and you go to trial and you're convicted, the only way that you'll come out is in a pine box. And she explicitly said that she would sentence him to life. And the problem with that, other than the fact that it's coercive, is that by statute, by Florida law, the mandatory minimum, if he were to be convicted, would be 25 years up to life. And so under the law, a judge isn't supposed to predetermine a sentence before hearing any evidence.

Roy Ramos (19:26)

Seems reason.

Sarah Alvarez (19:27)

So that's what we took issue with. Yeah, you know, due process and such and such. That's what we took issue with. And that was similarly denied.

Roy Ramos (19:37)

Danielle, I want to ask you this at trial because we've heard now Christian talk about multiple alternative theories, suspects, alleged confessions, but there was a detective who took the stand who basically said that Rashawn Jones was the only suspect with a motive and the only suspect who owned a.38. As I mentioned earlier, I wanted to get the direct quote from the ESPN investigation that in multiple interviews spanning more than two years, detectives insisted to ESPN that they never had a prime suspect. In fact, Miami Dades detective Miguel Dominguez in 2019 said, quote, the end of the day, it could be anybody. The possibilities are endless. So how do we go from that to a detective testifying that the possibilities aren't endless? This was our prime suspect from day one in 2006. And how did that happen? And how could he say that under oath in court when even though the jury didn't hear about it, but that there were potentially other plausible suspects?

Danielle Perez (20:35)

Yeah, I mean, you know, as Christian and Sarah mentioned before, before, there was many plausible leads. And he got up there and, and he testified that Rashawn Jones is the, that all roads lead to Rashawn Jones. And I think because Christian did this six hour cross examination, I think he would much better fill in the gaps of the question that you asked.

Christian Maroney (21:02)

First of all, it was our position that that opened the door to allow us to now cross examine and bring out some of these things that had been excluded previously. Obviously, we weren't allowed to do that. We did get a little bit of leeway to point out some faults in the investigation, but we weren't able to get into any specifics or point out any specific individuals who may have had a motive and why they may have had a motive. And I think one thing that came out in, in the, in the detective's testimony was he kept saying that although, you know, these other leads were excluded, there were no credible leads left, there were no credible leads remaining. But when pressed on what was done to close out these leads, what was done to investigate these leads, he couldn't Answer that question for. For most of the things that we were trying to point out. And I think that came across, and I think that is sort of an overarching theme in this case where the reason we wanted to bring a lot of this stuff out that I mentioned earlier was because there were no. There was an investigation done into it. None of these individuals on the other side of this club fight were interviewed. The individual who had made this confession that was made known to police from the ICE agent, there was no follow up done. They were just kind of sitting on their heels waiting for ICE to get back to him. There was information that ICE was reaching out to them, trying to give them updates, and they weren't able to get in touch with anybody. The other individual who confessed there was a mistake where they thought he was in custody at the time of the crime, so didn't investigate it. And then they didn't learn that that was a mistake and that he was actually out of custody when the crime occurred until 2022. So after Rashawn has already been arrested and charged. So that was. That's the main thing that we wanted to point out, that there wasn't investigation done into these things. And then was this conclusory testimony about how none of these were credible. These were excluded by who? Not sure when.

Sarah Alvarez (22:56)

Can I just jump in here and add that part of what was so frustrating about this is that basically all of the leads that we weren't able to talk about, unless, you know, we're talking about there were some just like throwaway, random leads that, sure, they just didn't seem to have any merit at all, but there was more evidence against those people than there is against Rashawn Jones. And so for the detective to be allowed to get up there and tell the jury straight up that, you know, all roads led to Rashawn Jones. Nobody else could have done it. Nobody else had a.38. It hasn't been proven that Rashawn had a.38. Hasn't even really been proven that the bullet itself was a.38. It was like, you know, almost completely

Roy Ramos (23:40)

flattened or partially Sarah, wasn't there some testimony that Rashawn Jones made reference to having his.38 on?

Sarah Alvarez (23:48)

Yes. So there were two witnesses who testified about Rashawn and guns. Both of them are now police officers and both of them are also. They were. Pat is best friends and are still very, very close with the family. One of them testified that Rashawn said something to the effect of big bro, I got my.38 on, mind you, Rashawn's number on the team was 38. So who knows?

Roy Ramos (24:17)

So that was his jersey number.

Sarah Alvarez (24:19)

That was his jersey.

Roy Ramos (24:20)

So he would literally have had a 38 on.

Sarah Alvarez (24:23)

Correct. Also, he was not friends with it. Like, even this guy admits that they weren't really buddies. So don't know why he would be saying such things to this person if he was saying these things at all. And then the other person who testified, Dave Howell, also a police officer, also friends with the Patas, he basically said that Rashawn had shown him a gun at some point and this happened in the context of someone else's dorm room where that person didn't see anything, didn't hear anything. And then he said that. So he said that he believed it could be, I believe, a smaller caliber firearm, but he could only even tell what kind of gun he thought it could potentially be based on his police experience. Twenty years after the fact, looking back on that, he now knows that it was this gun, which happens to be consistent.

Roy Ramos (25:17)

Sarah, what do we know about what happened with this jury? You had six people deliberating for six hours last Friday, another hour and change on Monday. This week, hung jury. What do we know, though? How did the vote come down?

Sarah Alvarez (25:31)

Yeah, so it would appear that it was five to one, five not guilty, one holdout, who, according to reporters, who were able to speak with this person, and I'm not sure who this person is, but they wouldn't move based on a gut feeling, and they weren't willing to discuss that gut feeling with the rest of the jurors once they had

Roy Ramos (25:56)

made up their mind, so refused to deliberate at that point. Hence the hung jury in the mistrial. Danielle, with a 5 to 1 in favor of acquittal, what's next? Is the state going to retry this case with the same evidence and the same witnesses that they nearly lost with?

Danielle Perez (26:11)

I mean, ultimately, that's what they're posturing for. They've. I mean, we're right, we're ready. We're going to keep fighting. I, I know that they haven't, that their only posture has been continue on to trial. We haven't heard anything otherwise. So we fully, as Sarah beautifully said it when we were leaving the courtroom after the mistrial, we're going to keep fighting because we know that Rashawn's innocent.

Roy Ramos (26:40)

Christian Rashawn Jones has been in jail since August of 2021. I mean, this summer it'll be five years. He was offered a plea of 15 years. He's already almost served a third of what the Plea was. I don't know if he did it or he didn't do it, but clearly the way the justice system works. He is now sort of a victim to some extent of this is there. I mean, and he's got bail, though, right? He just can't afford to post it, which is a up way that this system where, I mean, if you had the money, he'd be. He'd be out on the street. But for all this time. But what happens now with him? How is he doing? How's he feeling? What's morale like? And is there some reconsideration on Bailey or something?

Christian Maroney (27:24)

Yeah. So his bond, I believe it's currently $850,000. We have a motion that's set for hearing tomorrow to get a bond reduction based on, you know, the mistrial and some of the other information we learned about what the juror jury was thinking and the split. And hopefully we can get a bond reduction so that he can get out of custody, you know, for the. For the time being until the retrial happens. But as far as what he's feeling, you know, I think he feels similar to what I was explaining to you at the beginning. Right. It's. Nobody feels like it was a win, but it also wasn't a loss. And he's been waiting now four and a half years, almost five years for. For his day in court. And, you know, he's willing to. If he has to remain in, if the motion to modify bond gets gets denied, he's willing to, you know, do whatever it takes and wait as long as he needs to get his next day in court. Because like he said when the judge was asking him questions about a potential plea, he knows that he's innocent, and he does not want to plead guilty to a crime that he didn't commit. So that's where we're out. We're at. Hopefully he can get out pending this retrial. But if not, you know, I don't. I don't see any. Any resolution as of right now. Of course, things might change.

Roy Ramos (28:39)

But, Roy, this is just like a compounding tragedy because the. Of course, the Pata family has no closure here whatsoever. Brian Pata cannot rest in peace. And at the same time, you've got Rashawn Jones in this position where, again, I don't know if he did it or not, but when you're in this stage of the system, it's a matter of what can the prosecution prove beyond a reasonable doubt. And if they didn't feel they could make this case in 2006 or 2007. What makes them think that they can do it beyond a reasonable doubt 20 years later? And as it turned out, they couldn't if you got a jury five to one voting for acquittal. I really feel for the Pata family and the continuing tragedy of going through this.

Sarah Alvarez (29:21)

And I. Yeah, to be clear, we do, too. You know, we all do. What happened to Brian was tragic. It should have never happened, no matter what he was involved in. You know, we're not trying to. To slander him. He didn't deserve that. Nobody deserves that. But, you know, you got to get the right guy.

Roy Ramos (29:42)

Christian Maroney, Sarah Alvarez and Danielle Perez, thanks so much for being here. Good luck to you.

Christian Maroney (29:48)

Thank you.

Roy Ramos (29:49)

Before we go, Roy. Roy.

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Hi.

Roy Ramos (29:53)

You remember Joe Carollo, don't you?

Ad/Promo Voice (30:01)

Rings a bell.

Roy Ramos (30:03)

So remember that lawsuit he lost for 62 and a half million dollars for weaponizing city government against those business owners in Little Havana?

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Yeah. We didn't talk enough about that.

Roy Ramos (30:13)

And you think now that he's, like, retired and sailed off to Shangri La, little Billy Corbin, that we wouldn't have to talk about it anymore? But the damnedest thing happened. Apparently, he tried to appeal the case again, the verdict to the United States Supreme Court.

Ad/Promo Voice (30:30)

What?

Roy Ramos (30:31)

An attorney, Jeff Gotchas, who's been a guest on this program, who represented the owners of Ball and Chain, released this statement. The United States Supreme Court denied certiori in Fuller v. Carrio, leaving in place the lower court's ruling in favor of William Fuller and Martin Pinea. With that decision, this case has finally reached its end. For years, my clients, small business owners endured retaliation, financial harm, and significant stress on their families for exercising their First Amendment rights. The courts made clear that such conduct is unconstitutional. It is unfortunate that the city of Miami chose to spend millions of taxpayer dollars defending this abuse rather than accepting responsibility. Today's outcome reaffirms that constitutional protections apply to everyone and that government retaliation has consequences. And those consequences are a 62 and a half million dollar judgment. And coming up, they're going to trial, Roy, on a case that could bankrupt the city, that could cost the city taxpayers over $100 million. Because the first time they just sued Joe Carollo. But this time, they're suing the city of Miami for this weaponization using all the same evidence and all the same witnesses and all the same exhibits that they used in the first trial that they won. So you better believe they're going to win this time. There's going to be good money after bad. And it's going to cost the taxpayers nine figures. Grand opening.

Christian Maroney (32:01)

Grand closing.

Roy Ramos (32:02)

Cocaines.