Chapter 1: What happened in the murder case of Bryan Pata?
All right, ladies and gentlemen, I've received your note indicating that you continue to be a deadlocked and so at this time I will declare a mistrial and a hung jury. An agonizing 20 year wait for justice will have to wait a little longer.
Jurors in the second degree murder trial of Rashawn Jones, accused of killing his Hurricanes football teammate Brian Pata, could not come to a unanimous verdict. I'm even more convinced that he's responsible. Edwin Pata and his family sat through every day of the trial, which stretched into a third week. For our family, this is one of the hardest things we had to deal with outside of Bryant Pass.
It just brought everything back.
Pata was shot once in the head, killed in November 2006 outside his apartment complex near Dayland. Jones was not arrested until 15 years later.
Miami Hurricanes defensive lineman Brian Patta was murdered on November 7, 2006. One gunshot to the head. A short time after practice at the University of Miami campus, he headed back to his apartment in the Kendall area, the Colony Apartments that he shared with defensive tackle Dwayne Hendricks.
He was discovered first by his then-girlfriend and then by Hendrix, who I guess was coming a little bit later home from practice. And... The case was obviously a big deal.
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Chapter 2: What led to the arrest of Rashaun Jones in connection with Pata's murder?
It was in the midst of a pretty terrible season for the Hurricanes. Larry Coker, the head coach, would be fired just a couple weeks later. And there was a lot of tumult. It was a near-losing season. But Brian Pata's stock was on the rise.
It was looking like he was going to go probably in the early rounds of the NFL draft in just a matter of months and go from the streets of Miami's little Haiti to... becoming a professional football player and a multimillionaire. The case somehow went cold, went nowhere.
Over a decade later, the Miami-Dade Homicide Bureau and the Pata family reached out to the press specifically to try to heat the case and the investigation up again, see if anyone would come forward with any new evidence or information, any new witnesses to try to jog the public's collective memory about this tragedy and
And the police were cooperating for a while with ESPN, who did a real deep dive, a multi-year investigation involving thousands of pages of documents and video and audio. And then a weird thing happened, Roy. They suddenly stopped cooperating with ESPN. ESPN winds up suing them for public records that they refused to turn over. And suddenly... The detectives had done 180 degree turn.
Chapter 3: How did the trial proceedings unfold for Rashaun Jones?
This wasn't a cold case. This wasn't a case where, as one of the detectives said, it could be any number of theories. It could have been anyone. It could have been anything that happened. But suddenly they're saying this is an open and active investigation. There is an arrest that's imminent. And there is a prime suspect.
All of that is the opposite of what they had previously been telling the press on the record. And this is all in an effort, apparently, to not have to turn over these public records so that the press could continue to look into this investigation and find that it was woefully inadequate, that the detectives clearly appeared to have bungled this in the early days.
And now over a decade later, it was cold. And then what happened? In August of 2021, Rashawn Jones, who was a defensive back originally from Lake City, Florida, who had been suspended actually during the practice on the day of Brian Pata's murder after testing positive for marijuana, which was his third failed drug test.
So he was suspended and basically kicked off the team for at least the time being. And he gets arrested. This is in 2021. And he has been in jail ever since then. because he could not afford the bail, which is how this system works. So now he is still in jail because he was tried by a jury of six of his peers and they could not come to a verdict.
So the jury was hung and the judge declared a mistrial. We are now being joined by Rashawn Jones's defense team, represented by Christian Maroney, Sarah Alvarez and Danielle Perez. Guys, starting with you, Christian, is this considered a victory? I mean, he wasn't convicted. I guess he's going to get another day in court. What is sort of your take on the verdict or lack thereof here?
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 state decides to retry it. So it's not a loss, but it's not a win.
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Chapter 4: What were the key arguments presented by the defense team?
And, you know. We're ready to go again whenever the time comes. Obviously, it's not the best feeling in the world to have a mistrial, but it's not the worst feeling in the world either. Much, much better than the jury having come back with a guilty verdict. So the feeling is somewhere in the middle.
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. Pre-trial, you were trying to introduce some alternate theories of the case. I mean, I think it's somewhat remarkable that you got...
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?
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, Fednal. 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 west side 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 uh 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 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.
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Chapter 5: What alternative theories were explored in the investigation?
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 who 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 accounts and reports that they sort of thought it was squashed, that this hit was taken care of for a period of time.
And then sometime in the middle of October, 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 from people that there's a hit out on us and at this point and as far as the report goes um 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 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 October. So about three weeks before 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 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 fight at the club. One of these individuals, they both specifically named Brian Pata as the person 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 person who confessed, his name was Wilner Yacinthi,
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Chapter 6: How did the jury reach a hung verdict in Jones's trial?
Brian had his mother and I think his sister basically digging up the body and moving it to a secret location in part because these rituals and these artifacts are. were found in the area with Pata's 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. You 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 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 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 huge, obviously very potentially exculpatory evidence. We weren't able to get into it anyway, but as 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 fronted from pursuing those avenues.
Quick break to tell you about a special Miller time I had with my good buddy, Mochetta. Mochetta texted me the other day. He said, hey, what are you doing for the game? I said, I'm just on my couch right now, doing nothing, enjoying it. He's like, hey, do you want some company? I said, from you, Mochetta? Absolutely. Mochetta comes over to the house and I pull out the Miller Lite.
Miller Lite made that casual hang a memorable good Miller time with my good friend Mochetta because Miller Lite brought us together. We took that first sip after we toasted our beers and we knew we made the right call. We watched a game. All of a sudden, we're standing up on our feet. Big threes are being drained and white cans are being clanged.
See, times like these, that's exactly why Miller Lite is my go-to. Clean, refreshing, easy to drink, brewed for taste with simple ingredients. The original Lite beer since 1975, and it still hits different for yours truly and his good friend Mochetta.
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Chapter 7: What are the implications of a mistrial for Rashaun Jones?
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The crown is yours.
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?
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, you know, 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 was pretty significant that he was being essentially disqualified. 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, OK, 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.
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Chapter 8: What are the next steps for the defense team after the mistrial?
And so under the law, a judge isn't supposed to predetermine a sentence before hearing any evidence. And so that's what we took issue with. Yeah. You know, due process and such and such. But that's what we took issue with. And that was similarly denied.
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. 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-Dade Detective Miguel Dominguez in 2019 said, quote, at 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?
Yeah, I mean, you know, as Christian and Sarah mentioned before, there was many plausible leads and he got up there and he testified that Rashawn Jones, that all roads lead to Rashawn Jones. And I think because Christian did the six hour cross-examination, I think he would much better fill in the gaps of the question that you asked.
You know, 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 the detective's testimony was he kept saying that all 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 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 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
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