Miami-Dade Jury’s Decision Saves Life of Former Death Row Inmate Accused of Five Murders

DEBARYLIFE – A man who was given a death sentence fourteen years prior for the execution-style murder of five people in a Little Haiti apartment over thirty years prior had his life saved late on Thursday night by a Miami-Dade jury.

Every juror found Tavares Calloway guilty of the killings. However, when Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz failed to receive the unanimous vote required for a death sentence, state legislators imposed an 8–4 vote threshold for the death penalty last year. This level was not met by the group. To sentence someone to death row, juries had to approve unanimously prior to the March 2023 bill that was passed in Tallahassee.

The U.S. Supreme Court invalidated Florida’s capital penalty statute in 2016, which only required a majority vote, forcing Miami-Dade prosecutors to retry Calloway’s execution. A year later, Calloway and many other death row inmates in Florida were given new sentences by the state supreme court.

According to current guidelines, Florida is currently the state where it is easiest to send a killer to death row; Calloway is thought to be the first of more than a dozen convicted killers who are expected to be resentenced in Miami-Dade and have his life spared. In resentencing late last year, a Broward jury applied the new rule and spared the life of convicted killer Clark Paul.

After a two-week trial, the jury returned a life sentence verdict after painting opposing pictures of the convicted murderer on behalf of Calloway’s defense team. The men’s dignity was taken from them along with their shoes and pants when they were killed, according to the prosecution, who painted him as a callous and cold-blooded murderer.

The defense team for Calloway described how their client was a violent and drug-addicted child who was neglected and whose life started to improve soon after the killings. They gave Calloway’s investigation of the church and his acceptance by the “church ladies” credit for it. While inside, Calloway studied philosophy, reading, writing, and conversing with eminent thinkers such as Aristotle and Plato, according to defense lawyer Scott Saken, who told the jury.

Calloway was wiping tears from his eyes with his free hands following the jury’s decision, which was made around eight hours after the deliberations started and well after the majority of the victims’ friends and relatives had left. Before being escorted to jail by a group of Miami-Dade Corrections officials, he offered co-counsel Carmen Vizcaino a bear embrace.

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“Justice has won,” Sarken declared outside the man’s courtroom, whom he has been defending for at least fifteen years. “This item is 26 years old. The jury saw that he was a different person. It completely refutes the state’s theory.

Following the decision, lead prosecutor Abbe Rifkin, an assistant state attorney for Miami-Dade, and her co-counselors departed promptly.

A childhood marred by poverty, abuse, and neglect. For the jury to decide to execute Calloway, they had to reach a unanimous decision on at least one of the five aggravating circumstances that Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Miguel M. de la O had presented to them. All of them concurred on one: Calloway was the one who killed the people in 1997, which led to a vote in favor of the death penalty.

However, they were unable to come to a consensus that the crimes were the consequence of a kidnapping. Alternatively, the killings were deliberate, horrible, brutal, and committed for any kind of financial benefit.

Despite being presented with the transcript of the sworn statement Calloway made to police following his arrest in 1998—a confession in which he acknowledged his guilt—they were unable to reach a consensus on those questions. He admitted to detectives that he had forced one man to follow him into the flat at gunpoint, bound the other five, taped their lips and eyes, shot each of them once in the head, and taken their money and drugs.

Rather, the mitigating circumstances presented by Saken, who stated that his client was the destitute and abused son of a violent father who beat him arbitrarily, appeared to have enough weight with the jury.

He’s a highly mitigated guy, and Saken agreed that it was a mitigated guy. They should undress and lie on the ground.

2010 saw a 7–5 vote by jurors to execute Calloway following the state prosecutors’ account of how he and accomplice Antonio Clark shot and killed five individuals in a Little Haiti apartment, some of whom were small-time marijuana dealers.

In his police statement, Calloway described how a friend had alerted him to a possible “lick,” or small-time scammer, target. The state said that Calloway and Clark inspected the flat before the killings and went to a flea shop to buy gloves, caps, and camouflage clothing.

Then, on January 21, 1997, Calloway told police he had approached the man with a gun and told him to come inside the apartment, which had the front door and screen open, after witnessing one of the guys get out of his automobile. When they arrived, a fourth man was seated on a couch while the other three males were seated around a table.

Calloway claimed he gave the order for all five of them to undress and lie down on the ground, pointing the gun at the man’s head in a menacing manner. The man’s eyes and mouth were taped shut, and their hands and feet were bound, following Clark’s trip to the store to get duct tape.

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Calloway reported that they spent three hours conversing while also searching the apartment for cash and jewels. Eventually, they discovered roughly two pounds of marijuana and $600. The five guys who could identify Calloway were to be killed, it was decided in the end.

One by one, he informed the police, and he shot them in the head. Using Styrofoam heads with taped-over mouths and eyes, along with marks indicating where bullets had entered and exited the bodies, Rifkin attempted to take advantage of this during her final argument. She began to count down, attempting to convey to the jurors the experience that each man must have had as Calloway moved down the line.

She bellowed, “Bang,” as she raised her voice. Whoa, whoa. Boom, boom, boom. Go bang, go bang, go. Up until the five of them were shot and executed, “Bang bang bang bang bang.”

One of the murdered men’s girlfriends eventually found the bodies; she told jurors she went to the apartment in a fit of rage because her boyfriend had forgotten to pick up their child from daycare. She made police contact. For over a year, the killers’ trail went cold.

After Clark mentioned his name, Calloway was placed under arrest while police probed Clark for a different homicide.

Calloway killed Adolphus “Tank” Melvin, 27, Gary St. Charles, 22, Trenton Thomas, 26, Frederick McGuire, 31, and Derwin Bernard Copeland, 28, Melvin’s visiting nephew.

Calloway was convicted of capital murder thirteen years later and given the death penalty by a 7–5 decision. He was also convicted guilty of robbery, armed burglary, and aggravated kidnapping.

Saken said to the jury on Thursday during his closing argument that they have “been given the power of God” to determine Calloway’s fate.

“We’re asking you to focus on the individual,” he stated. “The state wants you to concentrate on the offenses.”