The legal confusion surrounding a controversial new Florida law requiring judges to sentence convicted undocumented immigrants to death for the most serious crimes is playing out in a Miami-Dade courtroom.
NBC6 has learned that the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office has decided not to apply the “sentence of death for capital offense committed by unauthorized alien,” as it’s refferred to by the Florida Statutes, in the case of Ronald Lopez Andrade, an undocumented Honduran national found guilty by a jury of the 2016 rape and killing of 30-year-old Yaimi Guevara-Machado.
Surveillance video captured the final moments of Guevara-Machado’s life inside a Hialeah motel, where she was seen asking for help after accidentally locking herself out of her room. Moments later, prosecutors say Lopez Andrade approached her, and when she refused his advances, he beat, raped, and strangled her to death.
Last year, as NBC6 exclusively reported, a jury found Lopez Andrade guilty, and in an 8–4 vote, recommended the death penalty. However, in May, before sentencing, Judge Michelle Delancy granted a new penalty phase trial after allegations of jury misconduct surfaced. That new trial, involving a fresh jury, was expected to start soon…