Prosecutors can seek the death penalty in the case of a Miami-Dade man accused of having a witness killed for cooperating with the government, an appeals court has ruled.
In a 20-page order, the 3rd District Court of Appeal cleared the way for prosecutors to seek the death penalty against Julio Montez Morris, 38. A Miami-Dade judge had previously found that prosecutors were blocked from asking a jury to send Morris to Florida’s Death Row because a prosecutor mistakenly filed a waiver of the death penalty in the case.
Prosecutors appealed that ruling, and a panel made up of Judges Edwin Scales, Monica Gordo and Kansas Gooden agreed, saying the trial judge treated a “mistaken administrative filing as a binding exercise of prosecutorial discretion.”
Morris, who has been in the Pretrial Detention Center since 2013, is accused in the 2012 murder of 29-year-old Jazzmon Parker. As Morris was facing trial for Parker’s killing, Ezell Finklea, a 61-year-old military veteran and witness who cooperated with Miami-Dade prosecutors despite threats to his life, was gunned down…