In 1997, Tavares Calloway stormed a Liberty City apartment, tied up five men, taped their mouths shut, took off their pants, debated which to leave alive, and finally and methodically shot each of them in the head.
In 2010, jurors recommended and a judge sentenced Calloway to die for his actions. However, late Thursday night during a resentencing hearing, the 45-year-old man got a chance to live after jurors recommended life in prison. Judge Miguel M de la O sentenced Calloway based on the jury's recommendation.
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WATCH HERE"You did this," the defendant's attorney Carmen Vizcaino told her client after hugging him.
"With your good behavior and self-improvement," she added.
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Twenty-seven years after the killings, Calloway was back inside a Miami-Dade courtroom crying and hugging his counsel out of excitement 14 years after being released from death row.
However, about six hours earlier, state attorneys were hoping to convince jurors to recommend death.
“Cannot possibly consider yourself to be a Christian and ascribe to the tenets of Christianity and religion and God and do what he did,” said Abbe Rifkin, one of three prosecutors handling the case while addressing jurors during closing arguments.
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In 2010, the convicted killer was sentenced to die when seven out of 12 jurors voted to recommend the death penalty. Five jurors voted against it.
At the time, defendants could be sentenced to death if the majority of jurors voted in favor of it.
However, in 2016, in an 8-1 decision, the United States Supreme Court struck down Florida’s capital sentencing statute as unconstitutional.
A high-level court opinion that allowed cases like Calloway’s to be eligible for resentencing. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, about 10 death row defendants from Miami-Dade qualify for a resentencing.
“It was intentional,” said Scott Sakin, one of the defense attorneys representing Calloway.” We are not offering excuses. We are not offering justification for what he did. What we are offering is mitigation as to why his life should be spared.”
Calloway was hopeful for a second chance at life and desired a different outcome than the first group of jurors from 2010 that recommended for him to be killed.
However, while the case was preparing for trial, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a new death penalty law that went into effect last year. Only eight jurors are currently needed to recommend death.
It's unclear how many jurors this time around wanted Calloway dead, if any. The jury was not pooled after the verdict.
