TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (Court TV) — Convicted killer Charlie Adelson will return to court for the first time in more than a year as he fights to get a new trial.
Charlie Adelson, a Fort Lauderdale periodontist, testifies during his trial, Thursday, Nov. 2, 2023, in Tallahassee, Fla. (Alicia Devine/Tallahassee Democrat via AP, Pool)
Charlie is one of five people convicted in the murder-for-hire that killed his ex-brother-in-law, FSU law professor Dan Markel. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole after a jury convicted him of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, first-degree murder and solicitation to commit murder in November 2023. Since then, his mother, Donna Adelson, was convicted of the same charges.
Florida’s First District Court of Appeal announced it would hear the first oral arguments in Charlie’s case on February 3, 2026. Each side will have 20 minutes to address the court.
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In his appeal, Charlie’s attorney cites four issues that he said prevented his client from getting a fair trial — first and foremost, failing to move the trial out of Tallahassee. During jury selection, Charlie asked that the trial be moved, but Judge Stephen Everett denied the motion. Now, Charlie’s attorneys say “it was not possible to convene a fair and impartial jury because of the extensive pretrial publicity” surrounding Markel’s murder.
While prosecutors have maintained there was no issue in seating an impartial jury, Charlie’s attorneys claim the coverage was so pervasive that knowledge and discussion of the murder became a facet of daily life for nearly a decade before trial — Markel was murdered in 2014; Charlie was not indicted until 2022 and did not stand trial until 2023. “Leon County residents did not simply recall the case,” Charlie’s attorneys wrote in their appeal. “They had lived with it, discussed it, theorized about it, and absorbed it into a shared cultural understanding of a local tragedy.”
Charlie’s appeal also accuses the court of erring by not striking jurors who allegedly discussed the case together before the trial began and for failing to allow the defense to introduce evidence it says would have swayed the jury to find the defendant not guilty.
Donna was also sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. She has filed a notice of appeal in her case.
