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The defense is accusing the state of “abusing its authority” in the high-profile murder trial.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Attorneys for Shanna Gardner filed a motion Thursday asking a judge to sanction the prosecution and accusing the prosecution of several violations.
Gardner is charged in the 2022 murder of her ex-husband Jared Bridegan along with her husband Mario Fernandez. The prosecution and defense have clashed on several fronts during the past year.
In essence, the defense wants to prohibit the state from obtaining any search warrants or issuing subpoenas without providing Gardner notice, for the state to turn over all notes with their encounters with confessed killer Henry Tenon and unindicted co-conspirators, authorize Gardner’s team to question Tenon’s attorneys regarding the meeting they had with prosecutors after his Jan. 13 courtroom outburst, and make the state pay Gardner’s attorney fees associated with this issue at $500 an hour.
On Jan. 13, Tenon said he wanted to talk about his “false testimony” and also asked for a new lawyer. Tenon was moved to Nassau County this week.
Gardner’s attorneys said Tenon and his attorneys met with prosecutors for 106 minutes on Jan. 14, but the defense said the prosecution “disclosed no reports, notes, or other documentation” about the meeting.
“It violates all notions of common sense that an extensive meeting took place the day after Tenon’s statements in open court and Tenon said nothing to the prosecutor,” the motion said.
Thursday’s motion also alleges “repeated and continued discovery violations,” and “heavy-handed tactics” with defense witnesses.
Gardner’s team said it discovered prosecutors issued an ex-parte investigative subpoena on June 3, 2024 to “J.B.”, an alleged unindicted co-conspirator, to appear at the State Attorney’s Office June 5 last year. The motion says the defense didn’t receive any documentation about the meeting, it wasn’t listed as a discovery exhibit and that the subpoena was “found this month in a folder containing unrelated toll records.”
“Most concerning is that such use of an ex-parte subpoena by the prosecutor was illegal because Ms. Gardner listed J.B. as a defense witness on December 2, 2023 and Ms. Gardner received no notice of this compelled witness examination,” the motion said. “… Ms. Gardner has been prejudiced because she has no clue as to what information J.B. provided to the prosecutors during the June 5, 2024 examination.”
The motion then accuses the State Attorney’s Office and law enforcement officers of “intimidating witness K.J.” by serving a subpoena in a Publix parking lot in 2023. The motion said the witness was threatened to be arrested for murder and that details of that meeting have not been disclosed.
The motion says the State Attorney’s Office coordinated uploading “unfiltered device extractions for the defendants” on Feb. 10 to a file sharing platform used by the State Attorney’s Office. The defense learned of this a week later, according to the motion.
Another motion filed on Wednesday asks for all of Tenon’s jail calls and inmate mail, saying the information is “material to the defense’s preparation and strategy.” The defense also has requested body camera footage from Tenon’s August 2022 arrest in a separate motion.
The motion states that the defense “admonishing” the prosecutors was not working and the defense sought the following sanctions:
- Prohibit the State (prosecutors and law enforcement) from obtaining any search warrants or issuing any subpoenas in this case without first providing notice to Ms. Gardner.
- Order the State (prosecutors and law enforcement) to turn over any and all notes related to the ex-parte encounters with Tenon, K.J., and J.B. at the State Attorney’s Office.
- Prohibit the State (prosecutors and law enforcement) from having any ex-parte encounters with Tenon without first providing notice to the Defendants and an opportunity to be present.
- Authorize Ms. Gardner to depose Alan Chipperfield and Matthew Bodie, Tenon’s attorneys, regarding the meetings at the State Attorney’s Office between Tenon and the prosecutors.
- Order the State Attorney’s Office to pay Ms. Gardner’s costs associated with litigating this and any further discovery issues in this case at a rate of $500 per hour.