ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — Jason Rodriguez was convicted two years ago of shooting and killing Otis Beckford and wounding five others at Orlando's Gateway Building in 2009. On Friday that conviction was overturned.
Rodriguez had been fired from a business in the Gateway building shortly before the shootings.
Investigators said Rodriguez walked into the eighth floor office of Reynolds, Smith and Hills (RS&H) Incorporated engineering firm, where he used to work, and fired at least two shots at Beckford, who was standing next to the receptionist's desk.
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Authorities said Rodriguez then walked to a common work area at the office and opened fire again. One worker said they hid under a desk, saw bullets hitting the floor and watched Rodriguez's feet walk past them. An eyewitness said there was shattered glass from cubicles and computers all over the floor.
Rodriguez's conviction was overturned by a three-judge panel Fifth District Court of Appeals panel who concluded that the jury was told to consider instructions which are only applicable to cases that occurred before June 2000.
The panel concluded that the jury "might reasonably have been misled" by what it called the erroneous jury instruction.
The instructions were given by then Ninth Judicial Circuit Chief Judge Belvin Perry.
Perry, a legal analyst for WFTV, said he felt it would be inappropriate to comment on the panel's conclusion.
The instruction had to do with hallucinations.
Rodriguez, who has a history of mental illness, claimed to hear voices threatening him.
State Attorney Jeff Ashton is asking that the Florida Supreme Court review the decision by the appeals panel.
Mark Maxwell served on the jury for the Rodriguez trial. On Friday he told Channel 9's Kathi Belich that he doesn't remember instructions about hallucinations. Maxwell said he recalls the focus being on whether Rodriguez knew right from wrong.
He said hallucinations did not play a major part in the verdicts.
"I don't think it affected us, this instruction that you're speaking of, but the process has to go on and I trust that it will work out in the end," Maxwell said.
He said he is frustrated to learn that the two weeks he and the other jurors spent in the court might be for nothing.
"It was very hard to see them try to struggle with that and there was another victim that was very emotional about it. I think we had to leave the courtroom a couple of times so that she could compose herself. So, that went a long way. You felt it. It stuck with you," Maxwell said.
WFTV legal analyst Bill Sheaffer said even if the Florida Supreme Court agrees to a review, it's unlikely to change anything.
"In the end the defense is going to have another shot at the insanity defense. There's no way there won't be another trial in this case," Sheaffer said.
Sheaffer sat through the entire murder trial in 2013 and said he believes a second trial is unlikely to bring a different outcome.
Sheaffer said the insanity defense is rarely effective and the focus will likely again be not whether Rodriguez did it, but whether he was insane and did not know it was wrong.
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