By Joel Anderson, Times Staff Writer
Monday, August 30, 2010
Robert Jardin, 35, is charged with two counts of first-degree murder. If convicted, he could be sentenced to the death penalty.
BROOKSVILLE — Jurors in the double-murder trial of a 35-year-old Brooksville man failed to reach a verdict Monday, deliberating for more than eight hours before retiring for the evening.
The 12-person jury will return to the Hernando County courthouse this morning, hoping to reach a consensus on Robert Jardin's role in the stabbing deaths of an elderly Masaryktown couple in October 2006.
Jardin, a former Marine and divorced father of three, has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder, armed robbery and grand theft in the deaths of Patrick DePalma, 84, and his wife, Evelyn DePalma, 79, in their secluded home near the Hernando-Pasco county line.
If convicted, Jardin could be sentenced to death.
Before jurors were sent away to deliberate Monday, attorneys started the sixth day of the trial with closing arguments.
First, the jurors were shown a portrait of a smiling elderly couple. The DePalmas had been married 62 years and lived a quiet and orderly life in retirement, going to church, keeping up their home and hosting family dinners most weekends.
Jurors then were shown photos from their autopsies, which exhibited the gruesome extent of their fatal injuries. The DePalmas were brutally beaten and stabbed to death in their home, victims of a vicious and seemingly random crime.
"They were murdered in their own home at the hands of that defendant right there," Assistant State Attorney Pete Magrino said while pointing at Jardin.
Magrino spent more than an hour laying out his case, revisiting evidence that placed Jardin in the DePalmas' home near Masaryktown and reminding jurors that Jardin had lied to detectives a number of times during the course of the murder investigation.
"If you want to believe the stories the defendant told you in this case, I can't stop you," Magrino said. "You can walk him out the back of the courthouse."
Defense attorney Alan Fanter reminded jurors that there was no evidence that showed Jardin participated in the murders, or that he had intended to even go to the DePalmas' home that night. Though detectives later found several of the couple's items in Jardin's mobile home, Fanter argued that did not prove Jardin had been involved in the stabbing deaths.
"If there was any evidence tying Mr. Jardin to the murder, you would have heard it," Fanter said. "But there isn't."
Jardin testified last week that he accepted a ride with a man named "Rick" to score some cocaine and that, along the way, they stopped to pick up another man named "Bub." They continued to the DePalmas' home on Korbus Lane and instructed Jardin to stay outside in the car. Within minutes, Jardin said, they waved him inside and into the grisly crime scene.
Jardin said he never told anyone what happened that night because Rick had threatened to harm his children.
Wearing an olive-colored suit, Jardin showed little expression and stared straight ahead for much of the day. Last week, Jardin occasionally smiled and even managed a few small jokes with a female friend who showed up to court every day.
But Monday, he was much more somber and sullen. Few, if any, of the jurors have made eye contact with him over the past week.
In the sixth hour of deliberations, jurors emerged to ask Circuit Court Judge Jack Springstead if they could review a transcript of Jardin's cross-examination Friday. The court reporter spent about a half-hour reading the transcript before the jury was sent on a dinner break.
The long day came as no surprise: Jurors, who will be sequestered, came to the courthouse prepared to spend a night away from home, dragging suitcases and other luggage into a holding area in the courtroom earlier that morning.
Joel Anderson can be reached at joelanderson@sptimes.com or (352) 754-6120.
