JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (Court TV) — With just months to go until the trial for two people charged in the murder of Microsoft executive Jared Bridegan, attorneys in the case are struggling to agree on how the trial itself will play out.
Shanna Gardner and her husband, Mario Fernandez Saldana, appeared in court together on Dec. 1, 2023. (Court TV)
Bridegan’s ex-wife, Shanna Gardner, and her husband, Mario Fernandez Saldana, are accused of hiring their tenant, Henry Tenon, to murder the victim, who was shot to death while driving home in February 2022.
Prosecutors built their case around Tenon, who initially confessed to his alleged role in the shooting and had agreed to plead guilty and testify against Gardner and Fernandez Saldana. But two years after his arrest, Tenon withdrew his guilty plea and told prosecutors he was no longer going to cooperate with their case. First, that led to prosecutors dropping their intent to seek the death penalty against Gardner and Fernandez Saldana, and now it’s creating problems for how the state planned to present its case to the jury.
At a pretrial hearing on Tuesday, Judge London Kite expressed her concerns about how Tenon’s change in plea could impact the other defendants. “I can’t have someone who is not set for trial slowing down cases that are set for trial, charged in the same indictment,” Kite said.
Fernandez Saldana’s attorney, Jesse Dreicer, then revealed that prosecutors planned to split the couple’s cases. “They no longer intend on trying these cases together, and that’s by agreement of the parties,” he told the Court. “OK, when was somebody going to let me know?” a frustrated Kite responded.
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Assistant State Attorney Alan Mizrahi explained that he planned to have jury selection for both Gardner and Fernandez Saldana simultaneously before proceeding with Fernandez Saldana’s case. The Gardner jury would wait, and then be recalled to serve at the conclusion of Fernandez Saldana’s case, at which point the second case would begin. “The time frame, your honor, is going to be virtually identical,” Mizrahi assured Kite.
But Jose Baez, representing Shanna Gardner, said he had a problem with the plan. “We would like to, rather than picking the juries at the same time and having the Gardner jury wait and perhaps create a whole slew of issues, we would like to go immediately following the Fernandez trial. We could then pick the jury right then and there and proceed like a normal trial.”
Mizrahi opposed that idea, saying, “The time frame is completely different if you have two different jury selections. That completely moves the time frame several days, probably.”
Kite said she would not make any ruling either way, because any change would have to come via a formal filing. “It needs to be by motion, not agreement,” Kite said. “Because what has brought them together is a joint indictment, and so if you want separate trials, it needs to be by motion.”
The larger issue, Mizrahi said, is that if Gardner and Fernandez Saldana are tried together, the juries will have to be brought in and out of the courtroom repeatedly. “This is not a case or a situation where we’re going to be able to shuffle a jury out for a witness or shuffle a jury out for part of our opening. The core of the Gardner case is inadmissible in the Fernandez case. We’re talking about at least six witnesses, if not more,” Mizrahi explained. “The reason that we charged them together is obviously they are co-defendants, and as well as Mr. Tenon was testifying, there was a logical reason to keep them together, because he was a testifying witness in both. Without him, it becomes less of a priority for the state to keep them together.” But Mizrahi also argued that completely severing the cases would be a waste of time and resources because the direct questioning of police and ministerial witnesses would be identical.
“So you’re not asking to sever, you’re just asking to try them separately,” Kite said. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
Kite told the attorneys to either file a motion or reach an agreement before the parties return to court on April 9.
