JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The defense teams for Mario Fernandez and Shanna Gardner are asking for more time in the high-profile first-degree murder case.
Fernandez and Gardner are both facing charges in the murder-for-hire plot to kill Gardner's ex-husband, Jared Bridegan. He was murdered in February of 2022 after dropping off his twins at Gardner's home and then stopped to move a tire from the road in front of the Sanctuary neighborhood in Jacksonville Beach. His two-year-old daughter, Bexley, was in the car at the time of the shooting but was unharmed.
Neither Mario Fernandez nor Shanna Gardner appeared in court, but their lawyers say they need time to go over the latest emails given to them by the State Attorney's Office.
This latest hearing revolved around the issue of attorney-client privileged emails uploaded in discovery to a NextPoint site. The defense team for Mario Fernandez has previously made a motion to have the Fourth Judicial Circuit of the State Attorney's Office removed from the case over the issue. Late Friday, Shanna Gardner's defense team filed paperwork saying they would be joining that motion.
According to filings from the State Attorney's Office, it claims the uploading of the documents was done accidentally by a 3rd party vendor. The State says they notified the defense teams and disabled the platform NextPoint when the mistake was realized. They also claim they did not open or review the emails.
Today, the State Attorney's Office says it handed over emails between its office and NextPoint, and the Secret Service taint agents who were supposed to review and pull out privileged material before it was uploaded.
"The state did hand us a couple inches stack of paper this morning in response to some specific discovery we requested from the state, we haven't had a chance to go through it, but we will," said defense attorney Jesse Dreicer.
The defense teams will have until February 2nd to go over the material, that's when Fernandez and Gardner are due back in court. Both have pleaded not guilty.
