JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Update: Click here to read what decision was made on the ruling in the pre-trial hearing Thursday.
It is an issue that has had a high-profile murder trial at a virtual standstill for nearly six months.
However, Thursday morning, a ruling is expected to come on whether or not the State Attorney's Office Fourth Judicial Circuit will remain as the prosecutors in the first-degree murder trial of Shanna Gardner and Mario Fernandez.
Gardner and her second husband, Fernandez, are facing several charges in what investigators say was a "murder-for-hire" plot to kill Gardner's ex-husband, Jared Bridegan. He was shot to death in February 2022 after dropping off his two oldest children at Gardner's home.
The co-defendants have both plead not guilty... but if found guilty, State Attorney Melissa Nelson has said she will seek the death penalty.
And despite Gardner and Fernandez having separate defense teams, both filed motions to have the State Attorney's Office Fourth Judicial Circuit removed from the case over what they say were violations of attorney-client privilege.
In the pre-trial hearings that occurred in April, the defense teams alleged there was misconduct from the State Attorney's Office with how they handled privileged communications and a debate occurred over two documents found on Fernandez's Google Drive. One of those documents is a spreadsheet of texts between Fernandez and Henry Tenon, the man who already plead guilty to firing the shots that killed Bridegan.
Fernandez's attorney said that document was made for his lawyers and is privileged, while prosecutors say there was nothing on it marking it as for a lawyer and it should be used as evidence.
So, there are quite a few options Judge London Kite has in making the ruling. She could choose to keep or remove the State Attorney's Office Fourth Judicial Circuit in its entirety, and if removed, then the case would go to another State Attorney's Office in Florida.
The other option Judge Kite has could be to remove the lead prosecutor on the case, but keep the office... but there is the question about whether or not the documents on Fernandez's computer and Gardner's iMessages will be considered admissible as evidence.
