TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Jury Recommends Death For Man Who Killed Wife

ADVERTISEMENT

By THOMAS W. KRAUSE, The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 3, 2007

TAMPA - After about two hours of deliberation, a jury voted 7-5 on Friday to sentence Khalid Ali Pasha to death by lethal injection.

It was the narrowest of margins.

Had one more juror voted for life in prison, execution would not be an option.

"It's the closest to life you can get," said Assistant State Attorney Jalal Harb. "It's a difficult decision for jurors. As far as I'm concerned, the system works. He's not getting out; that's all that matters."

In Florida, the jury decision is a recommendation to a judge, who will have final say in the sentencing. Judge William Fuente set a hearing for Dec. 21, when he will hear more evidence before making his decision.

Fuente must give the jury's recommendation "great weight."

After the decision, jurors declined to provide comment for publication. They said, however, they were heading to Hooters to discuss the case further, and to discuss their role in it.

Defense attorney Robert Fraser said he was disappointed in the jury's sentencing decision, but said in three decades of trying cases, this was one of the most "attentive" juries he has seen.

"They were wired into it," he said.

Considering Pasha's age, 64, he probably will not live long enough to run through all of his appeals, Fraser said.

Friday morning, before the jury began deliberation, Harb held in front of the jurors a white paper jumpsuit, still stained with blood. He held a pair of dirty rubber boots.

"He wore these for what?" Harb asked the jury rhetorically. "To protect himself."
Defense attorneys have described Pasha as a hardworking, religious, generous man. Harb told the jurors that Pasha reaped his rewards over the years for those attributes. Now, Harb said, it is time for him to face the consequences of his bad decisions.

"Bad decisions led to Mr. Pasha sitting before this court," Harb said. "For this defendant to get something from this jury other than a recommendation of a death sentence is appropriate, is acceptable but is not fitting of his actions."

Fraser told the jury that too many questions are left unanswered to sentence a man to death. No one knows Pasha's motive.

No one knows what Pasha and his wife talked about, Fraser said. He reminded the jury that Pasha's wife, Robin Canady, was drunk at the time she died.

"Wouldn't it be nice, before you recommend the death of a 64-year-old man, that you know what happened?" Fraser said. "You don't and never will. I don't. No one does."

Fraser reminded the jury that Pasha's mother died when he was 2 and the woman who took him in died when he was 6. He never had another mother figure.

"It's no wonder he could never form lifelong, lasting, deep relationships," Fraser said.

The prosecutors, Fraser said, have nothing but conjecture and speculation as to what happened when Canady and her adult daughter died, what was in Pasha's mind and what was in Pasha's heart.

"You are here to bring humanness to the dry courtroom," Fraser told the jurors. "The law is not human, but the law recognizes - and the law is wise for this - that the jury brings humanity to the law."

During the past several days of trial, prosecutors put forth overwhelming evidence that Pasha killed Canady, 43, and her daughter, Ranesha Singleton, 20. The jury took less than 90 minutes to convict Pasha on two counts of first-degree murder.

Witnesses testified that on Aug. 23, 2002, they were in the parking lot behind Woodland Corporate Center near Waters and North Manhattan avenues. They saw Pasha walk in and out of the woods carrying a shiny object while wearing a white jumpsuit covered with blood. They followed Pasha in their pickup until authorities arrived to arrest him.

In Pasha's van, sheriff's deputies found the jumpsuit, bloody latex gloves and a bloody knife. Through the woods, investigators found a cul-de-sac and Canady's car, also covered in blood.

Assistant Medical Examiner Sam Gulino testified Thursday that both victims were stabbed and struck with blunt force, starting while they were sitting in the car. Both women exited the car and collapsed on the cul-de-sac pavement. From there, the bodies were dragged several feet to the spots where officers found them.

Gulino said both victims had defensive wounds that were made on the arms and hands as they tried to fight off the attack.

Reporter Thomas W. Krause can be reached at (813) 259-7698 or tkrause@tampatrib.com.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT