.png?trim=0,0,0,0&width=1200&height=800&crop=1200:800 "Florida man, 76, who left 5-year-old girl to be killed by alligators, avoids death penalty – UK Times")
A Miami-Dade jury Friday spared the life of an elderly man who, nearly 30 years ago, kidnapped a five-year-old girl and left her to die in the Everglades, where alligators killed her.
The jury deliberated for more than three hours before deciding that Harrel Braddy, 76, would face life in prison rather than the death penalty for the 1998 kidnapping and murder of Quatisha Maycock.
Braddy was originally sentenced to death in 2007 by an 11-1 jury vote, but the sentence was overturned in 2017 due to a law requiring a unanimous verdict. Under a 2023 Florida law, a jury can now impose the death penalty with an 8-4 vote.
“The jurors in the resentencing of Harrel Braddy worked hard to find a proper sense of justice for the 1998 murder of 5-year-old Quatisha Maycock,” Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said in a statement. “No one can adequately describe the pain that Quatisha’s mother, Shandelle Maycock, had to go through reliving the details of her daughter’s murder.”
On a November 1998 night, Braddy drove Quatisha’s mother, Shandelle, a woman he knew through a church acquaintance, home from work and later agreed to take her to pick up her daughter, who was staying with a family friend, according to People. When they returned home, Shandelle asked Braddy to leave, claiming she was expecting company, which she later said was an excuse to get him to go, but he refused, insisting on talking.
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Braddy immediately attacked Shandelle when told to leave, threatening to kill her and choking her until she lost consciousness. When she regained consciousness, she was still in her apartment, and Braddy again choked her until she passed out.
Braddy then placed Shandelle in the trunk of his car and abandoned her on a deserted stretch of U.S. 27 near the Broward-Palm Beach county line. Shandelle survived despite Braddy’s apparent belief that she would not, and testified about the horrific attack during the recent trial. She was not present for the verdict, according to the Miami Herald.
Prosecutor Abbe Rifkin said Braddy committed the crimes after Shandelle repeatedly rejected his advances.
Fearing that Quatisha could identify him, he abandoned the child on Alligator Alley. Days later, fishermen found her body in a canal, still dressed in her Polly Pocket pajamas, with her left arm severed and bite marks on her head and stomach.
During closing arguments, Rifkin urged the jury to impose the death penalty, arguing that Braddy showed no decency and that Quatisha suffered fully aware in her final moments in the alligator-infested canal, the outlet reports.
Braddy’s defense attorney, Khurrum Wahid, urged jurors to consider the “full picture” of Braddy’s life beyond Quatisha’s murder and a previous crime spree. Braddy’s criminal history includes convictions for robbery, kidnapping, and attempting to kill a corrections officer by choking him. In September 1984, he escaped custody three times, overpowering a Miami-Dade corrections officer and four Broward deputies.
Despite this history, the defense highlighted that family, neighbors and church members knew Braddy as a generous family man. He has been described as a “model prisoner” during decades of incarceration and suffers from serious health issues, including throat cancer and brain and nerve damage.
Wahid also argued that executing Braddy would devastate his family, including his wife, Cyteria, to whom he has been married since the 70s, and their five children.
