By Police1 Staff
MIAMI, Fla. — A Florida prosecutor is probably wishing he hadn’t called the defendant ‘our favorite crackhead,’ because that’s what got a murder conviction tossed.
NBC News reports that Jerry Crew, 57, was found guilty of second-degree murder for allegedly taking part in a 2011 robbery that ended with a 19-year-old being shot to death.
The 5th District Court of Appeals overturned the conviction due to a number of errors, and blasted the prosecutor, Ryan Will, for demeaning Crew in his closing argument.
“The State degraded [Crew] by repeatedly asserting ‘there isn’t a moralistic thing’ about [him] and calling him a drug addict in various permutations like ‘nothing more than a hopeless old crack addict,’ a ‘crackhead,’’our favorite crackhead,’ ‘little beady crackhead eyes,’ and ‘crackhead little brain.’ In summation, the prosecutor continued, ‘This is a guy who committed a crime because he’s a crackhead and he was going to get free crack out of it.’”
The three-judge panel was surprised the trial judge allowed insults fly at the defense attorney and called the case “a primer on what not to do during closing arguments.”
Crew, who was sentenced to 30 years, can now apply for release.