CLEARWATER, Fla. (Court TV) — A plastic surgeon determined to represent himself on murder charges refused to argue any of the motions his previous attorneys filed in opposition to the death penalty on Friday.
Thomasz Kosowski appears in court on Aug. 21, 2026. (Court TV)
Thomasz Kosowski, 47, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in the death of Steven Cozzi, 41, whose body has never been found. When Cozzi disappeared in March 2023, he was representing a client who was suing Kosowski.
Two weeks after Kosowski declared that he wanted to fire his attorneys and represent himself, he sat alone at the counsel table in court for a pretrial hearing.
Prosecutors have announced their intention to seek the death penalty if Kosowski is convicted; Friday’s hearing was initially scheduled to argue the motions the defendant’s previous attorneys had filed, arguing that the punishment is unconstitutional and illegally applied for multiple reasons.
“To be honest, these are standard death penalty motions, and the advantage of going forward with those is that it preserves your right to argue them later,” Judge Joseph Bulone explained to Kosowski on Friday. “And if there’s a change in the law on some of these things, then you can go ahead and argue them at the point that the law changes.”
Bulone repeatedly urged Kosowski to let his attorneys help him.
Bulone: “You understand that they’re experts in death penalty law?”
Kosowski: “Yes.”
Bulone: “You understand that maybe you’re not?”
Kosowski: “Yes.”
Bulone: “So you still want to represent yourself for today’s hearing, which would be motions to exclude the death penalty in this case?”
Kosowski: “Yes.”
Kosowski then announced, “I move that we strike them all,” and asked that all the previous motions related to the penalty phase be removed from the docket.
Although the defendant had no interest in pursuing penalty-phase motions, he said he wanted to file a motion to re-depose witnesses in his case. Prosecutor Nathan Vonderheide approached the judge with the filing, saying that because e-filing wasn’t available, the defendant’s mother had handed it to him.
Kosowski said he wanted to depose four people because of a contradiction in one person’s earlier statements about the chain of custody of his vehicle. “Nobody followed the truck on the way to the processing garage,” he said. “And that was very clear.”
Investigators said a search of the truck in question yielded blood in the pickup’s bed and in the cabin.
Bulone said he would allow Kosowski to depose the witnesses over Zoom.
While Kosowski confirmed that he wants a jury trial to determine whether he is guilty, he signaled that he would like to waive the jury for any potential penalty phase. Bulone said that issue would be revisited at the end of the guilt phase, if needed, and that at that point he would also check whether Kosowski wanted to continue representing himself.
Kosowski’s trial is scheduled to start with jury selection on Sept. 14.
