TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (Court TV) — Donna Adelson appeared in court Friday for a motions hearing in the case in which she faces charges related to the 2014 killing of her former son-in-law.
Adelson faces charges of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder and solicitation to commit murder in connection with the shooting death of FSU Law professor Dan Markel. At the time of his murder, Markel was in a contentious custody battle with his ex-wife and Adelson’s daughter, Wendi.
Donna Adelson appears in court July 11, 2025. (Court TV)
Markel was shot in July 2014 while sitting in his car in the garage of his Tallahassee home. Prosecutors said Katherine Magbanua acted as the go-between for her then-boyfriend, Donna’s son Charlie Adelson, and two hitmen, Sigfredo Garcia and Luis Rivera, in Markel’s murder.
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The hearing addressed two motions filed by Donna’s defense team. One motion asked the judge to reconsider a previous ruling that prohibited mentioning Rivera’s affiliation with the Latin Kings gang.
The defense argued this information is relevant not as character evidence against Rivera, but to illustrate Donna’s state of mind regarding her perceived opinion about the dangerousness of the individual who committed Markel’s murder. Prosecutors said they had no new response to the request.
The second motion concerned discovery requests made by Donna’s new defense team, Jackie Fulford and Joshua Zelman, who took over the case last fall after Judge Stephen Everett ruled there was a conflict of interest for her previous attorney, Dan Rashbaum.
Fulford and Zelman requested a completely new set of discovery from the state when they took over Donna’s case in November 2024. They claim the state has not provided them with raw, unredacted data collected from Donna’s phone when she was arrested in November 2023, and the state maintains a court order is necessary to release it. Judge Everett granted the request for an order.
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Donna’s defense continued to say they have not received full discovery from the prosecution and requested raw, unredacted data collected from Wendi’s phone on July 18, 2014. The state claims a full extraction was not performed on that device, and the raw data does not exist.
Judge Everett issued a ruling on the defense’s change of venue motion ahead of the hearing; he reserved a final judgment on the issue and said Donna could bring up the issue again after an attempt to seat the jury.
Jury selection in Adelson’s case is scheduled to begin on August 19, 2025, in Tallahassee.
This story was reported by Court TV’s Emily Kean and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
