PAIN AND GAIN

Very quietly several lawyers laboured in the big courtroom on 4 (4-1) from late October through Friday December 20, 2024 picking two juries for the retrial of the penalty phase for the two defendants in the notorious double homicide in the mid 1990s. The facts were bizarre to say the least.

A guy named Schiller was kidnapped by lead defendants Noel Doorbal and Danny Lugo. He was kept in a warehouse blindfolded and was a victim of extortion, signing over bank accounts, his house, and finally changing the beneficiaries to his million-dollar life insurance policy. Then he was "released" in a harebrained scheme that involved getting him drunk, putting him in a truck with propane tanks, and staging an accident. The truck caught  fire but the victim stagged out only to be hit by a passing car. He was taken to JMH and when he awoke from a coma, he told the nurses he had been kidnapped. "No" they replied, "you were injured driving drunk".  It took a while, but Schiller finally got law enforcement to believe his story and get involved. 

As MDPD was putting together the facts of the outlandish kidnapping story, a wealthy couple from Golden Beach who had made millions in the 1-900 business that was thriving in the days before the internet went missing. 

Their Lamborghini was found, and eventually people came forward with another bizarre kidnapping tale that ended in tragedy. Both were killed using an obscure horse tranquilizer, and once dead their bodies were dismembered and placed in various barrels and receptacles and dumped in the Everglades. The movie details the killers buying and returning chainsaws to Home Depot because they could not get them to work in chopping up the bodies.    

At some point MDPD connected the perpetrators of the first kidnapping to the second kidnapping and double homicide and Lugo and Doorbal were both convicted and sentenced to death. The details of the crimes emerged in a series of New Times Articles and Hollywood made a movie called Pain And Gain with Mark Wahlberg and the Rock. We haven't watched it. We hear it is so-so. 

30 years later with the US Supreme Court and Florida Supreme Court playing chess with the death penalty, the two defendants were returned to Miami for a resentencing. 

ASAs Scott Warfman and Kioceaia Stenson for the State. 

Regional Counsel led by Silvia Gonzalez along with Alex Sola and Phil Reizenstein for defendant Lugo, and Bruce Fleisher and Francisco Marty for defendant Doorbal handed the defense. 

Judge Tinkler Mendez elected to try the cases simultaneously with two separate juries. The combined juries heard the prosecution's questions and then one jury at a time heard the cross. 

Earlier this past week both juries went out to deliberate. At one point one jury reached a verdict, but the Judge sealed it without revealing it while the other jury took another day to deliberate. Both verdicts were read on Friday afternoon and both juries voted for life in prison on both murder counts for both defendants. We hear- but are not sure- that both juries after finding some aggravators still each voted   12-0 for life. 

This was a stunning reversal of death sentences in a case that was notorious for its wanton senseless murders that shocked a community that is not easily shocked by violence and murder. 

We are no fans of the death penalty- but that does not mean we overlook the tragic murders of two innocent people who has their whole lives ahead of them. 

There are no winners here. Just tragedy, sadness, death and pain.  

Life in the REGJB marches on.