Miami-Dade jury spares the life of a former death row inmate convicted of 5 murders

MIAMI – A Miami-Dade jury late Thursday night spared the life of a man sentenced to death 14 years ago for the execution-style murder of five people in a Little Haiti apartment almost three decades ago.

Jurors agreed unanimously that Tavares Calloway committed the murders. But they failed to meet the relatively new 8-4 vote threshold for death that was put in place last year by state legislators after Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz didn’t receive the unanimous votes needed for a death sentence. Before the March 2023 bill passed in Tallahassee, a unanimous vote by jurors was required to send someone to death row.

Miami-Dade prosecutors were forced to retry Calloway’s death sentence after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Florida’s death penalty law in 2016, which only required a majority vote. A year later the state Supreme Court ordered re-sentencings for Calloway and dozens of other Florida prisoners on death row.

Calloway is believed to be the first convicted killer of more than a dozen expected to be re-sentenced in Miami-Dade, to have his life spared under the new guideline that now makes Florida the easiest state to condemn a killer to death row. A Broward jury spared the life of convicted killer Clark Paul late last year during re-sentencing, under the new rule.

The jury’s decision for a life sentence at the end of a two-week trial came after state prosecutors and Calloway’s defense team painted polar opposite portraits of the convicted killer. Prosecutors portrayed him as a cold, calculating killer who stripped the men not only of their pants and shoes when they were murdered, but of their dignity as well. Calloway’s defense attorneys explained how their client was a neglected child with drug-addicted and violent parents whose life began to turn around not long after the murders. They credited it to Calloway’s exploration of the church and his acceptance by the “church ladies.” Defense attorney Scott Saken told jurors Calloway learned to read and write and discuss the great philosophers like Aristotle and Plato, while he was in prison.

The jurors’ decision, which came about eight hours after deliberations began and long after most of the victims’ family members and friends had gone home, had Calloway rubbing away the tears from his eyes with his freed hands. He gave co-counsel Carmen Vizcaino a big bear hug, before being led away to jail by a gaggle of Miami-Dade Corrections officers.

“Justice prevailed,” Sarken said outside the courtroom of the man he’s been representing for at least 15 years. “This thing goes back 26 years. He’s a different person and the jury recognized it. It’s a total rejection of the state’s theory.”

Lead prosecutor Miami-Dade Assistant State Attorney Abbe Rifkin and her co-counselors left quickly after the verdict.