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Jurors convict a 19-year-old man of second-degree murder in the death of a Zephyrhills man during a fight.
By CHASE SQUIRES
© St. Petersburg Times, published October 19, 2001
DADE CITY -- Prosecutor Manny Garcia stalked the courtroom floor Thursday in a furious closing argument, waving an iron pole at the teenage suspect and hammering home his final point: Killing a man in the midst of a brawl is murder.
Jurors sided with Garcia and convicted Harvey Leroy Jones Jr. of second-degree murder in the April 2000 death of 44-year-old Loy Lee Hardwick in a scuffle that started on the street in front of Hardwick's Zephyrhills home.
Jones didn't move as the verdict was read. He barely blinked as he was led from the courtroom.
Hardwick's wife, Tammy, hugged her daughter, Ashley.
As she left the courtroom, near tears, Tammy Hardwick said she was pleased with the verdict. Then she added, "God is in control."
Witnesses during the three-day trial said Hardwick appeared to throw the first punch, a blow at Jones' twin brother that missed. They said Hardwick brandished a paint scraper from his back pocket as he squared off with Jones, and they said he dashed to his home and came out with a metal pole, 5 feet long, and swung it at the teenager as the fight rumbled up his driveway.
But it was Jones' final actions in the fight that convicted the 19-year-old, Garcia said.
In the instant after Hardwick swung the pole at Jones, when Jones grabbed hold and pulled it free, any argument of self-defense was gone.
With the threat of imminent harm passed, Jones had a duty to walk away, Garcia said. Anything that happened up to that moment didn't matter, he said. Jones was on another man's property, the threat had passed, and he became the aggressor.
"Under the law, he had to retreat. He had to leave," Garcia told jurors in his closing argument. "What Harvey Jones did on April 26, 2000, was not self-defense. It was not excusable. It was not justifiable. It was second-degree murder."
Defense attorney Elizabeth Hittos implored the jury to see things through her client's eyes. He was young, in the midst of a chaotic fight against a man who seemed enraged and bent on fighting him, she said.
There was no time, she said, to consider the points of law, to ponder what constituted a legitimate threat of harm.
"The state wants you to put this in a clinical setting and analyze it," she said.
After 21/2 hours of deliberation, with the verdict read, Hittos was on her feet the moment the jury filed out of the courtroom, arguing for a new trial.
Circuit Judge Maynard Swanson, she argued, erred when he wouldn't remove a potential juror who admitted some racist feelings toward Jones, who is black, forcing her to use one of her limited strikes. Five of the six jury members were white. Hittos complained Garcia should not have been allowed to show jurors a photograph of Hardwick's bruised face, his jaw bent grotesquely from the force of a blow.
And jurors shouldn't have been instructed to consider the so-called "castle doctrine," where a man is allowed to defend his home, because the fight started in the street, she said.
Swanson denied the objections, and Hittos said she planned to appeal the verdict.
The judge ordered a presentencing investigation on Jones, who has no prior adult criminal record. Sentencing is set for Dec. 7.
The maximum penalty for second-degree murder is life in prison, Swanson said. But Hittos said that with Jones' clean record, the sentence likely will be less.