Standing in leg shackles, a black sport coat and buttoned-down shirt, convicted murderer Beloni Petit-Frere exhaled loudly in court Thursday as a judge read a jury’s recommendation that he spend the rest of his life behind bars instead awaiting execution on Florida’s death row.
On March 4, the same jury had convicted Petit-Frere of two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Timothy Anderson, 40, and Leslee Umpleby, 49, on Oct. 13, 2020, at the Rose Motel in Winter Haven. This week they were to decide whether he should die by lethal injection or of natural causes in state prison.
The jury of five men and seven woman took about two hours to reach their recommendation of life in prison without the possibility of parole at the Bartow Courthouse. The jury left the courtroom for lunch about 11:30 a.m. and gave a bailiff notice they had reached a decision about 1:30 p.m…