Latest Delay May Not Be Last in Taylor Murder Trial

MIAMI, June 9 -- Chains around their hands, feet and waists jangled, announcing their arrival. Wearing baggy red jumpsuits inscribed with INMATE DCJ, four of the five men charged with killing Washington Redskins safety Sean Taylor filed past an armed guard into a nearly empty wood-paneled court room Tuesday morning.

The men slid into vinyl chairs as their lawyers assembled en masse in front of Circuit Court Judge Dennis J. Murphy for a hearing that lasted fewer than 15 minutes, featured not a word from any of the defendants, and included no members of Taylor's immediate family or close friends in the gallery.

The only major order of business was pushing back the trial date for the third time. The new date, Jan. 18, 2010, will fall in the middle of next season's NFL playoffs and more than two years after Taylor died from a gunshot wound he suffered when confronting alleged intruders in his Miami home Nov. 26, 2007.

"It's a little difficult working with everybody's schedule," attorney Stephen Kramer told Murphy. "We're trying to work through it as best we can."

None of the attorneys who clustered in front of Murphy agreed to an interview or responded to requests for one this week, with several citing the gag order placed on the case last year after waves of early publicity.

But David Edelstein, a criminal attorney in Miami for more than a dozen years who has no connection to the case, described the pace through South Florida's state court system as perfectly normal and a spokesperson in the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office said further delays would not be unusual.

"Even just a regular felony case in Miami can easily take a year-and-a-half or two years to go to trial," Edestein said. "When dealing with a case involving first-degree murder, it can take even longer depending on the complexity of the case and the seriousness of it."

And this one, lawyers say, is complex. For starters, there are five co-defendants, and all hail from Fort Myers, Fla., a town on the state's west coast. Facing first-degree murder and armed burglary charges in connection with Taylor's death are Eric Rivera, 19; Jason Scott Mitchell, 21; Charles K. Wardlow, 20; Venjah Hunte, 21; and Timmy Lee Brown, who turned 18 Sunday.

Taylor died Nov. 27 at 24, a day after being shot in the upper thigh when he surprised invaders to his home in the middle of the night, police have said. A Miami-Dade grand jury alleged that Rivera pulled the trigger. At least two of the accused were friends of Taylor's half-sister and had been in his home previously, according to interviews and reports released by the court.

All of the defendants replaced their original attorneys from Fort Myers with attorneys in Miami. Hunte, the only defendant not present Tuesday, is attempting to undo the guilty plea deal he entered into last year. In exchange for agreeing to testify against the other defendants, Hunte accepted a 29-year prison term.

He is scheduled to appear in court Friday. If convicted, the men face life in prison.

Edelstein and other attorneys interviewed on background for this story say rounding up witnesses all the way to Fort Myers, arranging the schedules of so many attorneys, and buying time to build the best case possible for men facing life in prison explain the case's deliberate pace. Each of the defendants waived his right to a speedy trial (within 180 days for a felony).

The Miami-Dade state attorney's office spokesperson, Terry Chavez, described Tuesday's trial date as nothing more than a "report date."

"This judge wants to keep everybody on their toes . . . [and] the case moving along to try to get everybody ready for trial," Chavez said Monday. "We don't think there will realistically be a trial before next spring."

Added Chavez: "When we get ready for trial, we want to make sure we can say we turned over every stone."