 | Bob Gabordi is executive editor of the Tallahassee Democrat and Tallahassee.com. He can be reached through this blog, at bgabordi@tallahassee.com or (850) 599-2177 |
This is what happens when documents are closed to the public and those closest to the information are ordered to be quiet or face contempt-of-court charges. I don’t know what to call it, but it’s not my idea of justice.
Andrea Green, who by multiple accounts is the man who shot Rachel Hoffman multiple times – including in the head, even shooting through her arms that she used to try to protect herself – was allowed to plead no contest to second-degree murder. He will spend the rest of his life in prison.
Deneilo Bradshaw, who watched as the murder took place and benefited from robbing Hoffman and killing her, is found guilty of first-degree murder and robbery after being convicted by a jury. He will spend the rest of his life in prison.
Some will say Hoffman was a less-than-sympathetic victim, and perhaps that is so. She was a recent Florida State University graduate with a history of dealing pot before she went to work for Tallahassee police as a confidential informant.
Still it is hard to justify why defendant Bradshaw – the one with the smaller role in her murder – gets first-degree murder and defendant Green – whose history of violent crimes makes your skin crawl – gets second-degree murder.
It gets harder to justify when you think of that night, with Hoffman – still alive and, as I said, trying to protect herself with her arms and hands against bullets – being shot time and again by Green. At his hearing, Green smiled and joked throughout.
To try to shed some light on all of this, the Tallahassee Democrat is now – still – pursuing the release of all evidence in the two cases, as well as previously undisclosed transmissions and text messages between police and Hoffman the night she was killed.
After Green entered his plea in court Wednesday, his attorney, Assistant Public Defender Ines Suber, said: "Obviously, it's a victory (for) the defense." The goal, she said, was to eliminate the death penalty.
It is the same reason Suber sought to shut out public scrutiny in Franklin County, where a grandmother faces murder charges in the death of her 5-year-old grandson. It is easier to cut the best deal in secrecy. It has nothing to do with real justice.
And the prosecutor in the Green case, Assistant State Attorney Georgia Cappleman, said, the state was not surprised by Green’s plea of no contest to second-degree murder.
"It's something we've been working on for a long time," she said.
All of which raises the question of whether the need for secrecy in this case really had anything to do with either justice or a fair trial, since it seems everyone was working to avoid any trial at all. If it was about justice, how could anyone agree that Bradshaw deserves a harsher outcome than Green? And if it was about a fair trial, well, let there be one instead of working “for a long time” on how to avoid one.
Maybe the need for secrecy really was about keeping the public silent while deals were being made. Maybe it is just about winning and losing, with justice an old-fashioned consideration of the naïve who still believe in it.
Maybe, in the end, winning and losing is justice these days. And maybe State Attorney Willie Meggs hit the nail solidly on the head by saying it really doesn’t matter in the end.
“What we are trying to seek is justice. It's hard to say if anybody likes this or dislikes it. If we had gotten a sentence of death, it's not like Rachel's going to come back."
True enough, but let’s call it winning and losing and playing the game how it must be played so your side wins. Let’s just not call it justice.
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