Jackie Fulford, a former top prosecutor in the State Attorney's Office who served as a Leon Circuit judge before her involuntary retirement in 2015, is giving the defense's opening statement.
"You heard an awful lot about what other people did in this case, but not a single piece of evidence was discussed that shows Donna Adelson planned this, hired anybody to do this or intended for it to happen," Fulford said.
"We're going to have a long trial. It's going to be long and we're going to have days. And you're going to hear a lot of evidence ... But I want to ask you to never ever stop thinking for the two weeks or two and a half weeks we're here about why we're really here."
"Because two men killed Danny Markel. Don't forget Danny. He was an amazing professor. He was very well educated ... He worked very hard. He earned a lot. What he did not earn was for somebody to do this to him," Fulford said.
Fulford mentioned the bitter divorce between Dan Markel and Wendi Adelson, telling jurors that "divorce is not usually fun at all."
"But moving forward to 2014 is where we're going to concentrate on because that's when Danny was killed," Fulford said.
"But moving forward to 2014 is where we're going to concentrate on because that's when Danny was killed," Fulford said.
She's telling jurors about how Dan Markel read bedtime stories to his boys over Skype. "These kids were not deprived of their father. Their father was brutally taken from them."
"She is a normal person just like all of us. At the time this happened, she was 64 years old, married to her husband, Dr. Adelson. Now they've been married 54 years." Fulford said Donna Adelson got up to work each morning to do the books for her son's business.
"People who know Donna will tell you that she is not the person that the state is portraying her to be," Fulford tells jurors. "She's kind, caring, loving. She cares more about people than she does herself."
Jackie Fulford showing a blue posterboard demonstrative with photos of Charlie Adelson, Kati Magbanua, Luis Rivera and Sigfredo Garcia.
Harvey Adelson, Donna Adelson's husband, is sitting in the front row on the defense side. He's alone on the bench.
Fulford is walking jurors through the day of the crime the say way prosecutors have, going through undisputed facts of the case.
"This case is really a lot about theory and motive and not evidence," Fulford said.
Fulford on prosecutors: "For the past nine to 11 years ... they have told the whole world that Mrs. Adelson was the reason that this happened. They've told this story, and it's outrageous. It gets people's attention. It's made a lot of money for the media."
We're almost 20 minutes into the defense's opening statement and there hasn't been any mention of extortion, let alone double-extortion.
The state's first witness, James Geiger, is called to the stand. He was Dan Markel's next-door neighbor on Trescott Drive who heard gunshots the morning of the murder & saw the getaway Prius speeding away.
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