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Man Convicted In Plant City Hammer Attack

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By THOMAS W.  KRAUSE | The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 5, 2008

Updated: 09/05/2008 09:13 pm

TAMPA - After eight hours of deliberation, a jury found 21-year-old Justin Jerrod Grayer guilty of murder Friday in a home invasion robbery in which a man was bludgeoned to death with a hammer.

In all, five Mexican immigrants were attacked Oct. 9, 2006, in their Plant City home. Jose Anaya, a father of two who had become a U.S. citizen, died from his injuries.

After the verdict, Circuit Judge William Fuente handed down a mandatory life sentence for Grayer. In Florida, there is no parole.

Several jurors were in tears as they left the courtroom. One, Rachel Schoenberger, said the jury service was excruciatingly difficult, including tough decisions and complicated legal instructions. Although the jurors were in agreement that Grayer was in Anaya's home, it took time to establish when he was there.

Ultimately, she said, Grayer's bloody fingerprints left on Anaya's bedroom door helped them reach the verdict.

In the early morning hours of Oct. 9, 2006, five men broke down the door of Anaya's house. One of Anaya's roommates, Cornelio Perez-Velazquez, testified that a masked man struck him in the side of the head with the butt of a handgun. He passed out.

Another roommate, Diogenes Vazquez, testified that he was punched in the chest and then struck on the head repeatedly with a hammer.

Perez-Velazquez has a steel plate in his skull. Vazquez has scars on his forehead and a finger that no longer bends, broken when he tried to block the hammer blows.

Voice Recognized

Vazquez testified that he recognized the voice of his attacker, although the man was masked. Later, when a detective showed him several photographs, he pointed out Grayer. Vazquez said Grayer often hung out at the home across the street.

Clayton Maxwell, who pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact and will receive a five-year sentence, testified that he and the others went to see a drug dealer across the street from Anaya's house. Several of the men walked out of the dealer's house and put on gloves and masks, he said. They armed themselves with hammers and a gun.

Maxwell said he watched the men walk into Anaya's house and walk out carrying several items. Later, he testified, he poured gasoline onto the floorboards of the men's car and burned it in the woods.

During closing arguments, Assistant Public Defender Anna Frederiksen-Cherry told jurors that Maxwell could not be believed. On the stand, he admitted to being a drug abuser, who was known to take methamphetamines hourly for up to 13 days straight. During his binges, he said, he often had difficultly identifying people and keeping track of time.

On that night, Maxwell testified, he was not taking methamphetamines, although he was drinking and smoking marijuana.

'Unbelievable' Mistake

Frederiksen-Cherry also pointed out mistakes made by a Polk County sheriff's deputy.

John Ashwell, who lived with Maxwell in Mayberry, called deputies when he read a newspaper account of the attack. Ashwell told Deputy Steven Pickavance that three men arrested for the attack were friends of Maxwell and that there was a fourth friend who may have been involved, too.

Ashwell showed the deputy several hammers he found in his yard and said they might be the murder weapons.

In what Assistant State Attorney Ronald Gale referred to as an "unbelievable" mistake, Pickavance did not believe Ashwell. Pickavance collected the hammers but threw them away in a trash bin. Plant City police detectives never recovered them.

In an attempt to explain the fingerprints, Frederiksen-Cherry said Grayer was basically a "looter" who went into the home after the attack to see what he could find. The real culprits, she said, were wearing gloves.

"He wasn't part of it because, if he was, he wouldn't have left his prints there," she said.

In closing arguments, Gale told the jury that the fingerprints were all they needed.

He held in one hand a picture of Anaya, bloodied from the attack. In the other hand, Gale held up a chart comparing Grayer's fingerprints with bloody fingerprints left on Anaya's bedroom door.

"If this is all I had, I'd still be standing up here asking you to find him guilty," Gale said. "Justin Grayer, literally, had the blood of these men on his hands."

A friend of Vazquez, Dave Franklin, sat through the three-day trial.

"I just know they are very hard-working, good people who got up every day and went to work," he said. "They didn't deserve what happened to them."

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

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