FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – Jury deliberations are underway in the murder retrial of Dayonte “Moochie” Resiles, who is accused of fatally stabbing 59-year-old Jill Halliburton Su inside her Davie home in 2014.
Resiles, now 27, chose not to take the stand in his own defense after the prosecution spent weeks building their case against him in the killing of Su nearly eight years ago.
On Wednesday, the jury sent in a request to re-hear some of the testimony given over the last couple of weeks of the trial.
The jury asked to hear about evidence collected from the scene back in September 2014, when Jill Halliburton Su was found dead in the bathtub of her Davie home.
This morning, Resiles’ friends and family gathered, praying in the hallway for the jury to find him not guilty.
“I’ve been here pretty much every single day and every time I sit in the courtroom I ask myself more questions. I’m not a lawyer I’m not an expert in that field, but I have common sense so I know certain things just don’t make sense to me so I’m just really expecting for the truth to come out,” Resiles’ sister Amelida said.
According to what Local 10′s Ian Margol heard in court this morning, the jury’s initial request for nine full testimony readbacks was going to take more than three days just to prepare, but they’ve since narrowed that request down a bit and the court reporter said she could have one of them ready by this afternoon.
On Tuesday, the judge read the jury the official charging documents, and then the state and defense each made closing arguments before the case went into the hands of the jury.
Prosecutors say Resiles broke into Su’s home, but ended up getting into a struggle with her, stabbing her to death, tying her up and leaving her in a bathtub full of bloody water inside her Davie home.
During closing arguments, the state said DNA evidence put Resiles in the home and proves he was the murderer.
“The defense and I are not going to agree on a lot, but I think we will agree a crime was committed. That Mrs. Jill Su was brutally murdered in her home on September 8, 2014,” prosecutor Maria Schneider said. “Science tells you the defendant killed Jill Su.”
“They had 7.5 years to bring you all of the evidence, to test everything they needed to test, to bring you witnesses, to bring you concrete, credible proof, that he killed Jill Su. And 7.5 years were wasted because they did not do that,” defense attorney Allari Dominguez said.
The jury will be sequestered until they come to a verdict.
A jury in Resiles’ initial trial could not agree on a verdict after five days of deliberations this past December, leading to a mistrial.
Resiles has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder. If found guilty, he could be sentenced to death.