For weeks, Isaiah Mosley shuffled into the morning chaos of the Miami criminal courthouse. He would head upstairs and find his place in the jury box of courtroom 4-1, sitting feet away from the man convicted of leaving a 5-year-old girl to be eaten by alligators in the dark, mucky waters of the Everglades.
Mosley, alongside 11 other jurors, faced a daunting task: Whether Harrel Franklin Braddy, who kidnapped the girl and her mother nearly three decades ago, should get life or death for his heinous crime.
Determining Braddy’s punishment for the death of 5-year-old Quatisha “Candy” Maycock, whose ravaged body was found in a canal days later by fisherman, was the hardest thing Mosley and several other jurors said they had done in their life. Flashbacks from the trial — graphic photographs showing how the alligators ripped off Quatisha‘s arm, learning she was in her blood-stained Polly Pocket pajamas when she was found — still trigger painful memories…