Cafe Hitch-hike

2023-08-26

More cold, hard fact and afterthoughts about the case

These are points I really hammered at to my nephews and members of my family because they felt that a 40- year long sentence wasn’t enough.

1. Florida has a high rate of unsolved crimes. A big part of it is people don’t report them or they refuse to talk to the police.

2. The detective told us that:

a. People in the area where my niece died to do not trust law enforcement and stay away from them as much as they can. They are not people who usually will talk to them.

b. But, in this case, they did and very willingly. The detective told us that if they didn’t step forward, there would be no investigation, no case, no court, and no sentence. The kid could had still been walking the streets.

c. One witness was in jail for a different charge and was willing to testify although they were scared for their life. They were so relieved they didn’t have to testify in a trial.

3. However, people who didn’t know my niece well or had lots of experiences with her were still willing to speak about it.

4. The detective admitted the case against the defendant was difficult for a variety of reasons and would not had led to a slam-dunk conviction. The witnesses made all of the difference. Apparently they all had similar stories that could be corroborated.

5. The defendant made a plea bargain which meant a trial wasn’t necessary. I told people after the court hearing that if they thought a 4 year wait for this was bad, or that the sentence for the defendant wasn’t enough, consider this:

a. The sentencing hearing lasted 40 minutes at the most. The only details of the crime that were mentioned in the courtroom were the few phrases included in the victim statement.

b. On the other hand, if we had a trial, we’d be in that hot box/ pressure cooker of a courtroom for a few days where we’d hear testimony. We’d hear witnesses, we’d hear cops. We’d hear police reports. We’d hear reports of the coroner who’d describe Ariel and her body like it was a frog or specimen in a dissection tray, and we may see photographs of her, her body, and the house where she died. We’d hear horrible details of her death and what happened.

We all knew Ariel had some very serious legal and personal problems before she died. A defense attorney would have plenty of ammo to shoot her down, and bad. All of her problems and bad behavior from all of the 8 months she was legally an adult would come out in a court room and make public record. They would show her social media posts where she was trying to come across as a little thug and gangbanger. They may even mention the people who she learned from or influenced her (some of which were members of our own family). It may be normal for people in our family and her friends, but it’s not normal the most of the world. It would look seriously shitty in a court and to go on public record.

The family would have to hear all of that on top of having to deal with their grief and difficult feelings. It would be like having to go everything all over again and then some.

Did we really want it? Could we really sit in the damn courtroom for a few days, keep our cool, and not get arrested for contempt of court or from trying to attack the defendant? Everyone said no to that. Now that I think of it, it could had easily led to humiliation for some. Sadly, others would gloat or think it’s cute or makes them a bigger badass. In a way, the defendant did us a huge favor by going with a plea and skipping a trial.

b. Some people felt that my sister settled for too little or small of a punishment. I had to remind others that B. did not call all the shots. The defendant and the attorneys proposed the plea, and my sister had to agree. Although he had the right to have a say in the matter, Ariel’s father couldn’t even touch it because he’s still so disturbed and my sister had to make that part of the decision on her own. The decision then had to be agreed on by multiple people, it was not made completely by her.

c. When I first saw the defendant’s publicly available mug shot, he reminded me of a high school kid because that was what he could had easily been. When I had seen him in the court, he still looked like a senior in high school and wasn’t short, but came across as a bit of a runt, something others thought and were surprised to see. People who are in prison for violent crimes and especially those against women and children are second or third-class citizens in a prisoner hierarchy. His mates will find out what he did cos it’s public record, and he will pay for it. With the guy seeming kind of like a runt, he will be lucky to live past age 40 or not be disabled.

d. The defendant also took a serious loss. He lost his freedom. The family did not know prisons are terrible places. Florida maximum security prisons, where this guy will be, are miserable places in the middle of nowhere. The defendant won’t be a free man until 2055 or when he’s 55 years old at the earliest, and Florida doesn’t have parole.

Something I keep to myself was the evidence wasn’t airtight and there wasn’t any DNA evidence of the defendant on my niece’s remains. There is a chance he was covering for someone else. I heard his only sibling was a high-ranking member of a local gang, so it is entirely possible that maybe the brother or someone else did it. It’s a possibility.

I also knew the defendant had a terrible childhood and was in the foster care system since he was 7 or 8 because his mother died. Florida is a horrible place for unprotected children, and the foster care system doubles that. It’s possible that maybe he just popped; he was friends with my niece and he wanted more, but it never happened. I know my niece could get really mouthy and have a lot of attitude (and it IS and WAS up to the guy to handle himself), but I could see how one thing led to another and the defendant exploded.

The witnesses actually were scattered, some ran away but somehow came back, and the cops had a lot of testimony fairly soon after the death. I doubt they all coached each other to say the same thing; emotions are really high all around and it would be hard for witnesses to completely keep their cool and give the same rehearsed story. It also seemed they were talked to multiple times, but the details they gave remained the same.

Although this part of the ordeal is closed, there’s questions that will probably never will be answered. We cannot be 100% sure the defendant really did it even if he pled guilty. We wanted justice for my niece, but what about him? He and his also took terrible losses for everything that happened.

Something else that I grieve about the most, which I also said elsewhere on these pages, is it really shows the burned out shell of the formation I call my family. The neglect, violence, horrible behavior, enabling all led to this. All of this was considered normal. Things didn’t get better with time, they got worse. I heard even more crap about things that are going on back in the hometown, in the past and now, and I was absolutely shocked. As if my parents and uncles didn’t do enough, my siblings do our own things and mess ups, and now my nieces and nephews are screwing up.

I was so guilty that I survived and about running away. My brother Deebo said it best, “we figured you ran for your life.”. Maybe he was right.

Maybe it’s time for me to embrace the life I’ve been able to have (no matter how miserable I felt at times) and squeeze and savor every bit I have left. My accomplishments, my pains, my joys, my heartbreaks. Embrace them cos they’re mine, because I’ve been able to have some victories, and I’ve worked so hard. But yes, embrace the hell out of what I’ve got. I don’t think I’m gonna cut people completely out, but go the way of the story of Lot and his family as they fled Sodom: don’t physically look back at the city being destroyed or else it takes me, too.

downwind | upstream