by Mike Sharkey
Staff Writer
Sometime on July 8 or 9, 2005, Reggie and Carol Sumner were abducted and buried alive.
On July 14, Alan Wade, Michael Jackson and Tiffany Cole were arrested in South Carolina and charged with murder.
The next day, Bruce Nixon was arrested in Macclenny.
Sometime between July 14 and July 16, law enforcement officials found the Sumners in Georgia.
Then the hard work began. And the delays. Lots of them. In fact, Jackson was sentenced March 6. From abduction to sentencing, that’s the better part of 32 months. Chief Assistant State Attorney Jay Plotkin said this case was especially time-consuming and frustrating for a variety of reasons. However, delays have simply become a fact of life for Plotkin’s office, which last year tried 27 murder cases and got 25 convictions – a rate that ranks among the best in the state.
In the case of the Sumner murders, Plotkin said there were plenty of factors that contributed to the lengthy case, the vast majority of which are out of his office’s hands.
“The first delay was that Michael Jackson was arguably the ring leader and he was under sentencing in South Carolina for another case. We did not get him back in Jacksonville until Nov. 15,” said Plotkin, explaining that Jackson was being tried for violation of probation and credit card fraud. “There were extradition issues. It’s not unusual in cases where there are multiple jurisdictions. Most of the time, we work it out, but it takes the whole system (working together) and we have little control.
“Since the bodies were found in Georgia, they (the defendants) could have conceivably been tried in Georgia. We really had three jurisdictions.”
By the time Jackson got to Jacksonville, Wade, Cole and Nixon had appeared in court and were sitting in jail.
Adding to what surely was going to become a drawn out case was the fact all four defendants had separate legal representation, a trend Plotkin says is increasing in multi-defendant cases.
“That made it very, very difficult to coordinate schedules,” he said.
Because Florida has unique discovery laws, the four defense attorneys all had access to every bit of information Plotkin and his staff had and were gathering.
“In a homicide case, the defense attorneys get to depose all the witnesses and all the attorneys have the right to be there,” said Plotkin. “We could’nt begin discovery until Michael Jackson got here. As a State Attorney, you never want to see a witness deposed four times. Those depositions can take hours and you do not want your witnesses under oath more than once.
“We had four defendants and many different witnesses. It’s very frustrating.
“Also, in homicide, there are a limited number of defense attorneys that will handle complicated cases. In death cases, there are even fewer because they have to be death certified.”
In the Sumner case, the defendants were represented by one Public Defender and three private attorneys. Plotkin said the law prohibits multiple PDs from working on the same case due to conflict of interest issues.
“One of the major reasons for some delays is four months into a case the Public Defender may realize they have a conflict of interest. There may be a witness they represented at one time” said Plotkin. “Sometimes the State does not agree, but ultimately the judge makes the decision. To a large extent, we may have to essentially start over. There’s very little the State can do to impact that.”
Plotkin said the Florida Department of Law Enforcement played a major part in helping put Jackson away. However, it took a long time for the FDLE’s impact to be felt.
“A significant role in the Michael Jackson case was forensics. The FDLE has good people and they work hard. But, they are completely overburdened,” said Plotkin. “We did not get the FDLE results back until March of 2007.”
If you are counting, that’s 22 months after the first arrest.
Plotkin explained the FDLE will only handle so many pieces of evidence at one time. For example, if Plotkin had 100 items from the Sumner case he wanted examined, the FDLE may only take 5 or 6 at one time.
Then there was Jackson’s sanity issue.
“In this case, Michael Jackson clearly pretended to be crazy and clearly we proved he wasn’t,” said Plotkin. “Several doctors examined him before we could proceed. If one defendant slows down a case, they slow down the rest.”
Before a trial day was set, Bruce Nixon pled out and cooperated with the State. The other three opted to roll the dice with a jury. However, before the trial could start a date had to be set. The judge, three defense attorneys and the prosecutor all had to find a date that fit into their calendars.
Michael Jackson, Alan Wade and Tiffany Cole were all tried in April of last year. Jackson’s verdict came in May 7, Cole on Oct. 19 and Wade five days later.
Once the guilty please were handed down, all three were sentenced. This time there were three separate hearings and three different sentences. That means more time, and time is something Plotkin’s office doesn’t have.
Jacksonville leads the state in murders and Plotkin said there are currently 91 defendants sitting in the Duval County Correctional Facility awaiting trial for murder.
“Some are waiting for a doctor to declare them competent to stand trial,” he said. “We do the best we can to resolve these cases expeditiously, but we have to do them the right way.”
And, the right way takes time. Quite often, a lot of time.