All Four of Them: How the State Answered the Andrews Verdict Today

Six months ago, in the same Tampa courtroom where opening statements began today, a jury heard the state of Florida argue that Alicia Andrews was part of a premeditated conspiracy to murder Charles Jones, the Jacksonville rapper known as Julio Foolio. The state had the phone data. They had the Ring cameras at the Airbnb. They had the Jacksonville home surveillance showing duffel bags being loaded into a black Chevy Impala. They had the license plate readers putting two cars in tandem down I-75. They had the Uber receipt. They had Alicia Andrews on video at McDonald's at 1:40 in the morning with a defendant sitting next to her.

That jury acquitted her of first-degree murder. They acquitted her of conspiracy. They convicted her of the lesser included offense of manslaughter.

Today, the same prosecution team walked into the same courtroom, in front of a different jury, and gave the first opening statement of the joint trial against the four men still facing charges. Scott Harmon took the podium. He spoke for close to three hours. And a dozen times, he used the same phrase.

All four of them.

Every round fired that night, he told the jury, was "dripping with the combined hatred and malice of all four of these defendants. All four of them." He repeated "all four" three more times before moving on. Later in the opening he came back to it: "all four of them" conspired. "All four of them" planned. "All four of them" executed. This was not a slip. This was the state's theory.

The Joint Trial as an Answer

When the defense for the four remaining defendants moved to sever their trials last month, the argument was simple. Each man has a different evidence profile. Sean Gathright has the ballistic chain and the Jacksonville home surveillance. Rashad Murphy has the Airbnb booking under his own ID and the flight to Atlanta. Isaiah Chance has the phone records placing his girlfriend's device at the tracking locations and a legal theory, principal liability, that does not require him to have fired a shot. Davion Murphy has six months on the run and a post-arrest recorded statement. The evidence against any one of them is not the evidence against any of the others. Trying them together, the defense argued, would blur those differences in the jury's mind and make it impossible for the Sixth Amendment right to individualized consideration to survive.

Judge Michelle Sisco denied every severance motion on March 30. The four defendants would be tried together, before a single jury, in the same death-penalty case. The defense took the ruling. The appellate record on that ruling started forming the day it was issued.

And today, in opening statement, the state made the defense's argument for them.

This is the structural choice the joint trial was built to allow. It is also the exact pressure point the defense has been writing into the record since severance was denied. A prosecutor who blurs individual culpability in opening is a prosecutor who has just given every defense attorney at the table a closing argument gift. "The state told you about all four of them. The state told you they all agreed, they all planned, they all intended. But when you go back into that jury room, the Constitution and the judge's instructions are going to require you to do something different. You are going to have to decide each man's case separately. And when you do, here is what you find about my client."

That line writes itself. Four times.

Why They Chose This Frame

The state had to make a choice. After Andrews, they could have tried the four remaining defendants one at a time, cleaning up the theory, letting each case stand on its own evidence. Or they could blend everything into one trial and count on the weight of the collective story to carry the jury past the problems that sank the prosecution the first time.

They chose the blend.

And they did it, I think, because they learned something specific from the Andrews trial. Andrews was the state's weakest case in terms of culpability, as their own prosecutor conceded. She was not a gang member. The state had to argue principal liability to get the murder conviction, the same theory they are now using against Chance. The Andrews jury said no to murder on those facts. What the state is doing with the joint trial is making sure that this jury never has to weigh the cleanest version of a principal-liability case by itself. Chance's case will be decided in the same room, at the same time, alongside three men the state will describe as the shooters. Gathright's ballistic chain will fill the courtroom while the jury is simultaneously asked to decide whether Chance helped or hindered. Rashad Murphy's flight to Atlanta will play on the same screens while the jury is asked whether Davion Murphy's absence from the October 2023 prior attempt matters.

The math is not subtle. Four defendants in one room means four shades of evidence coloring each other. The state's answer to the Andrews verdict is to never again try a principal-liability case in isolation.

What Gonzalez Built Before the Jury Arrived

There is a second move from today worth keeping in your mind as this trial unfolds. Before the jury was sworn in, defense attorney Brian Gonzalez, representing Rashad Murphy, made the first protective record of the trial. His motion in limine was about the drill rap videos the state was about to play during opening. His concern was that the lyrics in those videos name multiple gang-war casualties beyond the six historical incidents the court has already admitted into evidence. If the state played the videos in opening, Gonzalez argued, the jury was going to hear names of dead people whose deaths the court has already ruled the state cannot prove at trial.

Judge Sisco overruled the objection for opening. The videos are not being admitted for the truth of what they claim, the ruling went, and the gang experts will still be held to the six admitted prior incidents when their testimony comes later. On its face, that looks like a loss for the defense. It is not. What Gonzalez did was build the ceiling. Every gang witness who takes the stand in the coming weeks is now going to be tested against that ruling. If the state pushes past the six admitted incidents, if they let a witness sneak in a seventh murder or an eighth casualty, the objection is already on the record and the appellate court already has the shape of the issue.

That is the defense work that does not show up on a thumbnail. That is the defense work that matters.

What Comes Next

The four defense opening statements follow this one. Each attorney is going to try to carve their client out of the collective frame the state just built. Watch for Gonzalez to argue that Rashad Murphy was not at the October 2023 prior attempt. Watch for Chance's attorney to remind the jury that their client is not accused of firing a shot, and to preview the principal-liability instruction the jury will eventually receive. Watch for Gathright's attorney, Florida State Representative Michele Rayner, to start dismantling the ballistic chain before the first witness takes the stand. Watch for Davion Murphy's counsel to address the flight to Atlanta head-on.

And watch for what none of them can say. No defense attorney is going to be allowed to stand up and tell this jury that a different jury, six months ago, heard this case and did not convict on the murder theory the state is presenting again. Courts do not let defense attorneys do that. But the four attorneys at that defense table are going to find every way they can, inside the rules, to remind this jury that the state has to prove this case against each defendant individually, on the evidence, beyond a reasonable doubt. That is the whole game.

I am not going to tell you what I think the verdict should be. I am not the judge. I am not the jury. I am a watchdog, and my job is to tell you what I see. What I saw today is the state of Florida making a bet that a jury of Tampa citizens will hear "all four of them" enough times that, when deliberations begin, they will carry that framing with them into the room. The defense's job, starting tomorrow, is to break that framing into four pieces and make sure each piece stands or falls on its own weight.

That fight is the trial. Everything else is just evidence.