Emilio Nunez blamed his ex-wife Maritza Martin Munoz for their daughter Yoandra's suicide and killed her before a television crew in 1993.

				Nunez Murder Trial
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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla (Court TV) — Neither time nor death has cooled the anger that Emilio Nunez feels towards his slain ex-wife.

Seven years after killing Maritza Martin Munoz, he still blames her for their daughter Yoandra's 1992 Thanksgiving suicide. She put too much pressure on Yoandra, he claims; she was too hard on her. She drove Yoandra to suicide. Nunez was so despondent over his daughter's death that he contacted the local Florida media and agreed to be interviewed about the suicide at the cemetary where Yoandra was buried.

However, at his daughter's gravesite, Nunez took his anger and grief out on Martin. When Martin suddenly showed up at the cemetary, prosecutors say Nunez ran to his car and retrieved a gun. As a television crew looked on, Nunez ambushed Martin and shot her 12 times at point-blank range. As the television camera rolled, Nunez stood over his ex-wife and fired repeatedly at her head as she lay in a fetal position.

After the shooting, Nunez fled to his car and sped away. He was captured days later in Texas. Now, seven years to the day — and several defense attorneys — after the killing, Nunez is preparing to go on trial for the alleged first-degree murder of his ex-wife.

Although he is the one on trial, Nunez reportedly wants to focus the testimony on his slain wife and her alleged failure as a mother. Nunez's world was turned upside down when his daughter Yoandra shot herself in the chest on Thanksgiving day 1992. Yoandra was 13 weeks pregnant, and in her suicide note, she explained that she did not want to live anymore because she had not — and could not — be the daughter her mother wanted her to be. Besides lamenting that she was skipping classes at school and getting bad grades, Yoandra wrote that she was afraid to tell her mother that she was pregnant.

Martin admitted feeling responsible for her daughter's death. She told investigators that she was overprotective of Yoandra and lost her temper several times when her grades slipped. She told them about a confrontation at school where she hit Yoandra with a belt after learning that she had been skipping classes. Martin, her second husband, and Yoandra went to counseling, but nothing was solved. The problems continued, with Martin slapping Yoandra in the face during an argument the day before the suicide.

According to court papers, when Nunez learned about the circumstances surrounding his daughter's suicide, he demanded that police hold Martin and her second husband responsible. Nunez's father, Emilio, Sr., warned police that his son was extremely despondent and dangerous. Police went to Yoandra's funeral to protect Martin from Nunez.

Nunez proceeded to contact the Spanish-language television network, Telemundo, and asked producers to do a story on his daughter's suicide. Occurio Asi ("That's the Way it Happened") picked up the story, and reporter Ingrid Cruz and photographer Jorge Delgado decided to interview Nunez at his daughter's gravesite at Our Lady Queen of Heaven cemetary. Their videotape of the murder and their eyewitness accounts may play a key role at Nunez's trial.

Florida prosecutors believe Martin's slaying is a clear case of premeditated murder. Prosecutor Tim Donnelly stresses that premeditation only takes a split second and points out that Nunez had to go to his car and get his gun before killing his ex-wife. This, Donnelly says, shows that Nunez had to be thinking about what he was doing at the time of the killing.

Nunez's defense, however, is unclear. Nunez and his attorney, Reemberto Diaz, have been arguing over his defense strategy. Diaz wants to present an insanity defense — several doctors have examined him and say he is insane and has suffered brain trauma.

Earlier in the case, Nunez had agreed to an insanity defense. But he has since admitted in open court that he lied to doctors to feign insanity in the psychiatric reports. According to news reports and court papers, Nunez has shown signs of mental illness during much of his life. Born and raised in Cuba, he was reportedly abused by his mother, who would repeatedly hit him over the head with a frying pan and ram him headfirst into walls. Nunez has also told experts that he spent 10 years in prison in Havana as a political dissident and was deprived of light and subjected to electric shock to his head and testicles. According to Nunez's father, he son began showing signs of paranoia and mental illness after his release from Cuban prison.

Despite this evidence of mental illness, Nunez, sensing that a successful insanity defense could still land him in a mental institution for several years, wants to use a heat of passion strategy. He claims that he was so angry at his Martin for the ongoing battle between her and Yoandra — and the subsequent suicide — that he "lost it" when he saw her at their daughter's gravesite.

This, Nunez believes, proves that the killing came from the boiling over of his emotions, not premeditation. If Nunez can convince jurors that the killing was second-degree murder with a diminished capacity defense, he could be released from prison in several years. If Nunez is convicted of the even lesser count of manslaughter, he could walk out of court a free man because of the time he has already served.

One of Broward County's oldest investigations, Emilio Nunez's case has outlasted six defense attorneys, three judges, and a prosecutor. Even now, on the eve of opening statements, he is threatening to fire his seventh attorney, Reemberto Diaz, as they continue to disagree over his defense. He has already fired Diaz's co-counsel. Because his first-degree murder charge was not filed as a capital crime in 1993, Nunez faces 25 years to life in prison if convicted. (Today, first-degree murder carries a mandatory life sentence if not charged as a capital crime.)

Though Nunez has changed his defense strategies and lawyers like pairs of socks over the years, his anger at his slain wife remains. And the fact that Maritza Martin Munoz lies buried next to Yoandra probably continues to fuel Nunez as he sits in his prison cell day after day.

— Bryan Robinson

Reported by Court TV's Mary Jane Stevenson.