No death penalty for 4 ex-students charged in gruesome machete murder
Prosecutors won’t seek the death penalty for four of the five former students accused in the gruesome machete murder of a teenager in the woods of Homestead.
The state announced Tuesday it would only seek to execute the alleged ringleader, Kaheem Arbelo, who is believed to have delivered the fatal machete blows to 17-year-old Jose Amaya Guardado, whose corpse was found buried in a shallow grave near the Homestead Jobs Corp facility.
Arbelo, 22, and four others are accused of hatching and carrying out the plot to murder Jose outside the live-in school for at-risk students in June 2015.
The others now face life in prison if convicted of first-degree murder. They are Joseph Cabrera, 24, Desiray Strickland, 20, Jonathan Lucas, 19, and Christian Colon, 20.
In January, Cabrera rejected a plea deal that could have meant as little as 10 years in prison if he agreed to testify against the others.
The shocking murder raised concerns about oversight and security at Job Corps, which operates 125 campuses across the country and falls under the U.S. Department of Labor. The program helps at-risk people between the ages of 16 and 24 earn their high-school degrees and learn vocational skills.
After the arrests, federal authorities suspended fall classes at the Homestead campus.
Law-enforcement sources have told the Miami Herald that the killing may have stemmed from a debt owed to Arbelo, and that the accused students were known as bullies at the campus.
According to an arrest report, the group conspired for two weeks to kill Guardado, who vanished from the campus in June 2015. His brother later found him buried in the grave in the woods near the campus, his body had been hacked so viciously that “his face caved in,” according to the report.
Arbelo and Strickland had sex in the woods after the group cleaned up the crime scene and buried the dead teen, according to the police report. A Miami-Dade grand jury later indicted the group on charges of first-degree murder.
Strickland did not confess, but was accused of head-butting a homicide detective and vandalizing a table during her interview at Miami-Dade police headquarters.
Cabrera and Strickland are also awaiting a hearing sot hat a judge can rule whether there is enough evidence to keep them behind bars. It’s been on hold since a judge last month ordered the courtroom closed to the public and the media, saying that the “pervasive publicity” surrounding the case jeopardizes the right to a fair and impartial jury at a trial down the road.
Prosecutors are expected to detail the confessions of four defendants; those statements have been sealed by the court under Florida law. The Miami Herald and WPLG-ABC10 are appealing to the Third District Court of Appeal.
This story was originally published February 21, 2017 at 10:15 AM with the headline "No death penalty for 4 ex-students charged in gruesome machete murder."