Attorney for rapper YNW Melly is turning up the heat on Florida prosecutor Kristine Bradley as he asks the judge to remove her from Melly’s second trial for double first-degree murder charges set to begin on October 9.
Attorney Jamie Benjamin, who was retained following Melly’s first trial ending in a hung jury, has filed more than a dozen motions where he complains that the district attorney’s office, including Bradley, was aware of several Brady violations and deliberately concealed evidence that pointed to the rapper’s supposed innocence.
The latest motion is seeking to have Bradley and the State Attorney’s Office removed from the trial. According to reporter Bryson Paul, who shared snippets of the motions, Benjamin is alleging that a witness from the State Attorney’s office, Michelle Boutros’s upcoming testimony in Melly’s trial, will contradict those of Bradley.
According to the motion, the source of the Bradley violations is the lead detective in the case, whose evidence has weighed heavily on the trial and is likely to do so in the second trial. However, Benjamin says that Brady’s violations committed by Moretti, which include violating established principles of executing warrants and collecting evidence and then lying about it, make Bradley a witness since she was aware of Moretti’s actions.
“Further, as to Defendant’s Motions to Suppress Evidence, Detective Moretti’s credibility is automatically at issue since he signed the affidavits in this case. Therefore, again, certainly, Ms. Boutros, possibly Ms. Bradley, would be witnesses. As to the Motion to Dismiss for Government and Prosecutorial Misconduct in Violation of the Defendant’s Due Process Rights, it has become clear that decisions on providing the defense with this unmistakably Brady material, reached the highest realm of the State Attorney’s Office. Ms. Boutros testified that Mr. Pryor, Ms. Faulk, and Mr. Killoran, over the approximately last year, have been involved in this matter on several occasions,” the motion read.
#YNWMellyTrial2: Last Friday, September 29, @YNWMelly’s Lead Attorney Jamie Benjamin filed a Motion To Recuse State Attorney’s Office Of The 17th Judicial Circuit In And For Broward County, Florida with the Broward County Courthouse.
Benjamin is requesting the removal of… pic.twitter.com/Q4uXqzJnh2
— Bryson “Boom” Paul (@brysonboompaul) October 2, 2023
It continued, “Therefore, Ms. Bradley, individually, is certainly conflicted in representing the State in this matter… Allowing this State Attorney’s Office, and specifically Kristine Bradley, to continue as counsel in this [case], violates Defendant’s Due Process Rights guaranteed by both the Florida Constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States.”
The motion also added that not only did prosecutor Bradley allegedly know of Detective Moretti being willing to “fabricate evidence,” but she also allegedly “had her own conversations with Detective Moretti as to soliciting a BSO deputy to lie.”
In the meantime, presiding judge John Murphy III has deferred his ruling on the motions to dismiss until a later date. The re-trial date is still set for October 9.
In the meantime, a new lawyer has joined Melly’s defense based on a new motion filed by attorney Robert Trachman for the return of a cell phone that was seized from Melly’s mother, Jamie King, by detective Moretti using alleged “excessive force.”
It’s unclear if the phone in question has been used as evidence or will be used in the new trial.
