JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Defense attorneys and prosecutors in the Jared Bridegan murder-for-hire case are facing a significant challenge: The mountains of evidence they’re having to sift through.
And now, the detective originally tasked with reviewing and redacting that overwhelming evidence is officially, well, overwhelmed.
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Clay County Sheriff’s Office Detective Ben Simmons admitted to the judge that his agency just doesn’t have the resources to handle the project.
“In my career as a digital prints examiner, I’ve never had this magnitude of data… a lot of data like gigabytes, terabytes,” Clay County Sheriff’s Office Detective Ben Simmons said. “I’ve done minimal redactions for small cases. But nothing to this magnitude.”
That magnitude of evidence is against Shanna Gardner and her estranged husband, Mario Fernandez, who are accused of a murder-for-hire plot to kill Bridegan, Gardner’s ex-husband. Both are facing the death penalty.
The defense attorneys and prosecutors said the volume of evidence that hasn’t been processed yet is making it a struggle to prepare for trial – which is tentatively scheduled to begin in October 2025.
Among the evidence are thousands of unredacted files, including phone records, text messages, bank statements, and data from cell phones, iPads, and computer hard drives.
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Defense attorneys for both Gardner and Fernandez expressed frustration over the backlog.
“I just want to highlight that what Detective Simmons has brought to your attention is not something that you have not heard us saying since the very first court date,” said Jesse Dreicer, one of Fernandez’s attorneys. “But it does highlight how much discovery is in this case. The very issue that Detective Simmons ran into is what our office is running into on a daily basis of work to do in this case.”
Dreicer said when they search for specific evidence, thousands of items are flagged, and they have to be reviewed one by one.
Gardner attorney Patrick Korody suggested handling the evidence like the feds do: with a team and not just a single investigator.
“There has to be from the state of Florida, the entire state of Florida, there has to be a resource effort on their side,” Korody said. “If they want to use this evidence at trial against our clients, they have to dedicate the resources to get what has to be done under the law.”
With Simmons tapping out, Judge London Kite must assign a new agency to sift through and review the piles of evidence.
She acknowledged the issue, describing the evidence backlog as a major obstacle to the case proceeding smoothly.
“In my mind, this is causing so many problems. So many problems because we have a significant amount of information that has not been gone through,” Kite said. “Then, if it is finally examined, it could relate back to things that have already been done. Then we would be duplicating the work.”
The judge suggested assigning the review to a state agency, such as the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), or a larger law enforcement agency in Central or South Florida with more resources.
Gardner and Fernandez will be back in court on Jan. 6. By that date, Judge Kite expects the state and defense to have a concrete plan for reviewing the evidence.