{"id":23629,"date":"2013-08-20T12:47:26","date_gmt":"2013-08-20T16:47:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=23629"},"modified":"2013-08-20T12:47:26","modified_gmt":"2013-08-20T16:47:26","slug":"judge-declares-mistrial-in-baby-tossing-murder-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=23629","title":{"rendered":"Judge Declares Mistrial In \u2018Baby Tossing\u2019 Murder Trial"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>RICHARD McTEAR, JR.<br \/>\n\u2026Charged with first-degree murder<\/p>\n<p>EMMANUEL WESLEY MURRAY, JR.<br \/>\n\u2026 Thrown from the window of a car on I-275 in May 2009<\/p>\n<p>\tOn Tuesday morning, a Hillsborough County judge declared a mistrial in a death penalty murder case. The mistrial came about after a witness made comments that had previously agreed that would be inadmissible.<br \/>\n\tA 16-panel jury was selected last Friday in the first-degree murder trial of Richard Anthony McTear, Jr. McTear, 25, is accused of causing the death of 3-month-old Emmanuel Wesley Murray, Jr., on May 5, 2009.<br \/>\n\tHillsborough County Judge William Fuente said on Tuesday, \u201cThe jurors heard testimony they should not have heard under any circumstances. In this court\u2019s opinion, a mistrial is necessary. \u2026 I do this with extreme reluctance.\u201d<br \/>\n\tMs. Jasmine Bidwell, 22, was the State\u2019s star witness in the case. She took the stand Monday and during questioning by the prosecutor\u2019s office, recounted incidents leading up to her son\u2019s murder. She testified about telephone calls she had allegedly received from McTear.<br \/>\n\tAt one point, Ms. Bidwell said, McTear told her he was \u201cgoing to come over and shoot my baby in the face and p&#8212; on him and he was going to kill both of us.\u201d<br \/>\n\tHillsborough County Assistant Public Defender Michael Peacock then called for a mistrial. He contended that her statement had been ruled inadmissible.<br \/>\n\tThe Defense argues that McTear is not guilty of the crime.<br \/>\n\tMs. Bidwell notified the Hillsborough County Sheriff\u2019s Office on May 5, 2009, that McTear was waiting inside her apartment. He is alleged to have attacked her, thrown the baby on concrete and fled the apartment with the infant.<br \/>\n\tThe baby\u2019s body was found on the side of I-275 less than two hours after the report was filed. McTear was arrested later that day. He was taken into custody after he was found hiding behind an apartment in Robles Pond Public Housing Complex.<br \/>\n\tA new trial date has not been set.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>RICHARD McTEAR, JR. \u2026Charged with first-degree murder EMMANUEL WESLEY MURRAY, JR. \u2026 Thrown from the window of a car on I-275 in May 2009 On Tuesday morning, a Hillsborough County judge declared a mistrial in a death penalty murder case. The mistrial came about after a witness made comments that had previously agreed that would [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88889,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/88889"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23629\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}