JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Duval County Circuit Judge Jeb Branham on Tuesday refused to grant a new trial or resentencing hearing for a Jacksonville Death Row inmate convicted of the 1993 murder of a husband and wife.
Michael Bell, 54, can appeal the decision to the Florida Supreme Court. He is scheduled to be executed on July 15.
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Branham’s order followed a dramatic Monday evidentiary hearing during which two witnesses who were expected to say their decades-old trial testimony was based on lies cooked up by police instead changed course and refused to recant. Branham said their refusal amounted to a “fatal” turnabout in Bell’s defense, but his order didn’t mention that the witnesses were also told they could be charged with perjury had they recanted – a dilemma Bell’s defense lawyers said amounted to a threat.
The two men, Henry Edwards and Charles Jones, told investigators for Bell’s legal team last week that their testimony in Bell’s 1995 trial was false: They were coerced and threatened by JSO Detective William Bolena or prosecutor George Bateh to make the statements, according to sworn affidavits each of them signed.
They were expected to testify to that on Monday but abruptly reversed course after Branham refused to grant them immunity and instead appointed them attorneys to advise them on the consequences of committing perjury.
The situation, appellate attorney Bob Norgard argued, created a false choice: Facing the possibility of a perjury charge amounted to a threat against witnesses who just one week ago told defense investigators their original trial testimony was also coerced with threats.
Branham also allowed the witnesses to refuse to answer a broad spectrum of questions by invoking their Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination – an expansive use Bell’s attorney said offered them “blanket” protection against answering questions even unrelated to their original trial testimony.
The judge found the witnesses’ refusal to recant a decisive turn against Bell’s defense strategy, but his Tuesday morning order omitted any mention of the lingering threat of perjury hanging over their testimony or their use of the Fifth Amendment during the hearing.
Edwards, with his court appointed attorney standing feet away, took back his June 16 statement to Bell’s defense investigators, saying instead that he thought the investigators who asked him questions about the case were authors putting together a movie script. In most of his questioning, Edwards invoked his Fifth Amendment right to self-incrimination.
Colin Kelly, the investigator who interviewed Edwards and Jones, testified that he and his partner identified themselves as investigators for Bell’s appellate team and explained that both men willingly participated in interviews and signed off on their individual affidavits after reading through them paragraph by paragraph.
When Kelly told Jones that a death warrant had been signed in Bell’s case, he said Jones sank down and said he spoke freely and expressed that he “needed to get this off his chest and that it was his time to come forward and tell the truth.” According to Kelly’s testimony, Jones admitted he was coached to lie.
Branham’s order declared that Edwards – a man who testified that he didn’t know how many felony convictions he had because there were so many – was more credible than Kelly.
Jones, also with his newly appointed attorney standing nearby, only answered two questions asked by Norgard: that his sister was in a relationship with Bolena around the time of the murder and that he signed the affidavit submitted last week. He invoked his Fifth Amendment rights to every other question asked, including questions related to police abuse relayed in Jones’s earlier affidavit.
Because he didn’t recant his trial testimony and didn’t answer questions, Branham said he had “nothing to evaluate the credibility of,” according to the order. In the case of Jones, the judge didn’t mention Kelly’s testimony recounting Jones’ decision to sign the sworn affidavit.
Branham’s order discounted eight other witnesses Bell’s defense team put on the stand at Monday’s hearing.
The court also found that the possible recantations by Edwards and Jones were not timely – a procedural finding that means Bell’s lawyers could have and should have made these arguments years ago.
Norgard told Branham that he did not know either witness had made such a claim until attorneys for another Jacksonville death row inmate, Kenneth Hartley, who were investigating the veracity of witness testimony and police conduct in that case, called him after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed Bell’s death warrant last week.
The Tributary investigated the prosecution against Hartley in a series of stories published in March. Those stories revealed questionable tactics used in the case by Bolena and George Bateh, a longtime Jacksonville homicide prosecutor, including the questionable use of jailhouse informants with credibility problems. Bell’s attorneys cited that work in their efforts to get him a new trial or sentence, arguing The Tributary’s findings indicated that Bateh and Bolena made a habit of using troubling tactics.
Bateh has largely declined to speak with The Tributary about its stories. Prosecutors on Monday called Bateh during the hearing, during which he denied pressuring or threatening any of the witnesses in Bell’s case. Norgard attempted to ask Bateh about The Tributary’s series, but Branham sustained the state’s objection that the line of questioning went beyond the scope of the hearing.
Bell was convicted of killing a Jacksonville couple as revenge for the murder of his brother. It was a case of mistaken identity: The victims, Jimmy West and Tamecka Smith, were not responsible for his brother’s death. Bell also later pleaded guilty to three other murders: a woman and her toddler son in 1989 and the killing of his mother’s boyfriend about four months after the West-Smith murders.
Bell’s attorney in Bell’s 1995 trial, Richard Nichols, did not present a defense during the trial. During the penalty phase Nichols only presented Bell’s mother as a witness and did not ask her a single question about her son.
Nichols, who died in 2023, also didn’t mention Bell’s time at Dozier School for Boys, where Bell reported he had been sexually assaulted by a guard and was forced into a fight club where the guards placed bets on which children would win. That decision has been scrutinized in subsequent years.
At least 29 former Dozier students have been sent to Death Row, according to Tracking Florida’s Death Penalty, a blog run by local attorney Melanie Kalmanson, who has done extensive pro bono litigation in death penalty cases.
Teri Sopp, who worked as an assistant public defender for years in Jacksonville and now represents clients in a judicial circuit west of the city, often offers commentary on cases in her legal blog and told The Tributary that Nichols was “from a different generation of lawyers” who often skipped the meticulous pretrial investigations you see today.
“Many lawyers were not aware of the opportunities to present expert testimony or mitigation evidence in death cases,” she said.
The jury unanimously recommended a death sentence for each conviction. The Judge R. Hudson Olliff sentenced him to death on June 2, 1995. If put to death, Bell will be the eighth person executed by the state this year following Tuesday night’s execution of Thomas Gudinas, 51, who was convicted of raping and killing Michelle McGrath outside of an Orlando bar in 1994.
Nichole Manna is The Tributary’s senior investigative reporter. You can reach her at nichole.manna@jaxtrib.org.