Florida court says ‘no’ to teen’s bail
A Florida appeals court has refused to release on bail a Canadian diplomat’s teenage son while the youth awaits trial on a murder charge.
Online court records show a three-judge panel Wednesday denied an appeal from 15-year-old Marc Wabafiyebazu.
Wabafiyebazu faces charges including felony murder as an adult in a March 30 shooting in Miami that left his older brother and another teen dead. Police say the Wabafiyebazu brothers tried to rob marijuana dealers when shooting erupted.
Circuit Judge Teresa Mary Pooler ruled in June that Wabafiyebazu posed too great a flight risk and would be difficult to extradite if he fled to Canada.
He is the son of Roxanne Dubé, Canada’s consul general in Miami, who says the teen is innocent.
Marc Wabafiyebazu has pleaded not guilty. The felony murder with which Wabafiyebazu is charged rests on his being an active accomplice to the attempted armed robbery of the drug dealer.
However, surveillance video shows he was waiting in the passenger seat of his mother’s black BMW when the shots rang out. Police say he was acting as a lookout.
In his petition to the appeals court, defence lawyer Michael Corey had argued that a police account of an alleged confession Wabafiyebazu apparently gave in the double killing makes little sense,
Even if Wabafiyebazu did talk about the crime, Miami police failed to inform him of his rights — meaning they obtained the alleged statements illegally, the lawyer says.
“The court’s heavy reliance on the improper confession is misplaced,” Corey stated in his petition to the District Court of Appeal. “The statements … are almost uniformly contradicted by the undisputed physical evidence and witness statements.”
Initially, a senior detective charged Wabafiyebazu with minor offences, but changed that to murder after his alleged confession to a rookie officer who was driving him to a detention centre.
By the officer’s own account, the distraught teen, who had just heard his brother was dead, offered 23 pieces of information in less than two minutes — something the lawyer called “suspicious and implausible.”