JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Prosecutors threw Judge London Kite a curveball last week when she learned for the first time that they now want to try Shanna Gardner and Mario Fernandez separately in the high-profile Jared Bridegan murder-for-hire case.
Fernandez and Gardner are scheduled for trial in August in the 2022 killing of Bridegan, a father of four who was gunned down while driving home with his toddler daughter. Gardner was Bridegan’s ex-wife, and the two share twins together.
Until last week, the plan had been to try Gardner and Fernandez at the same time with separate juries, but that was contingent on Henry Tenon, the accused gunman in the case, testifying against the pair as part of a plea agreement.
Tenon has since withdrawn that guilty plea and said that he no longer plans to testify against Gardner or Fernandez.
Gardner, Fernandez and Tenon are all now under indictment for first-degree murder and other charges in the February 2022 ambush shooting. They have each pleaded not guilty.
So, during last week’s pre-trial hearing, Fernandez’s attorney, Jesse Dreicer, told Kite that prosecutors now plan to split the Gardner and Fernandez trials.
“They no longer intend on trying these cases together, and that’s by agreement of the parties,” he said.
Clearly annoyed, a frustrated Kite responded, “OK, when was somebody going to let me know?”
Dreicer explained that the plan now seems to be to try Fernandez first and then Gardner after, but prosecutors said they still want to pick the juries at the same time.
Kite said trying them separately without officially severing the cases doesn’t make any sense.
But Assistant State Attorney Alan Mizrahi argued that the original plan to try Gardner and Fernandez together was “logical” because Tenon “was a testifying witness in both.”
“Without him, it becomes less of a priority for the state to keep them together,” Mizrahi said, pointing out that shuffling the separate juries in and out of the courtroom complicates the trial.
“This is not a case or a situation where we’re going to be able to shuffle a jury out for a witness or shuffle a jury out for part of our opening,” Mizrahi explained. “The core of the Gardner case is inadmissible in the Fernandez case. We’re talking about at least six witnesses, if not more.”
And attorneys for both defendants seem to agree that separate trials would be best for their clients.
But the defense and prosecution differ on how the juries should be picked if that’s the case.
The state argued that using one jury panel for both trials could save time, but Gardner’s attorney, Jose Baez, pointed out a major flaw in that plan.
“Picking the jurors at the same time and having the Gardner jury wait could create a slew of issues,” he said. “We would like to go right after the Fernandez trial.”
Mizrahi said picking juries separately would alter the timeline for the trials and caues unnecessary delays, but Kite shared Baez’s concerns, saying that sending Gardner’s jury home while Fernandez’s trial proceeds could expose jurors to outside information, increasing the risk of a mistrial.
Kite declined to make a decision at last week’s hearing, telling the attorneys to either file a motion to separate the trials or come up with a plan for how they want to proceed.
As of Thursday morning, no motions had been filed by the prosecution or defense.
Timeline: How we got here
A little over four years ago, Jared Bridegan dropped his then-9-year-old twin children off at the home of his ex-wife, Shanna Gardner, after a “date night” with their dad.
He left Gardner’s Jacksonville Beach home on Feb. 16, 2022, with his 2-year-old daughter, Bexley, strapped in her car seat in the back of his dark-colored SUV. They were headed back to St. Augustine.
But the 33-year-old Microsoft executive never made it home.
Following his normal route through the Sanctuary neighborhood, Bridegan suddenly had to stop in the area of Jacksonville Drive, America Avenue and Sanctuary Boulevard.
A tire was in the road.
When Bridegan stepped out of his SUV, he was ambushed by gunfire. At least one bullet missed Bexley by mere inches in her car seat.
RELATED | Murder-for-hire plot included practice run along Jared Bridegan’s normal route home: prosecutors
Bridegan was left lying in the street next to the SUV with the door wide open, and the shooter seemed to melt into the shadows just as quickly as he had launched his ambush attack.
None of the 911 callers that night mentioned seeing a shooter or a vehicle leaving the scene.
LISTEN: Press play below to hear 911 calls from night of Jared Bridegan’s murder (WARNING: May include graphic content)
But eventually, detectives tracked down the man they say pulled the trigger.
Investigators say that it was all part of a murder-for-hire plot set in motion by Gardner and her new husband, Mario Fernandez. It was a conspiracy that began in November of 2021, according to court documents.
Interactive Timeline
Alleged murder-for-hire scheme
According to detectives, Gardner was tired of sharing custody of her twin children with Bridegan.
Fernandez, she knew, could “take care of him” because of his military background, Gardner told a friend. At least that’s what the friend told investigators as she detailed the strained marriage between Gardner and Fernandez and the contentious ongoing custody battle between Gardner and Bridegan.
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Investigators say that’s exactly what Fernandez did, hiring Henry Tenon, a tenant at one of his properties, to kill Bridegan.
In his initial interview with police in July 2022, Tenon told investigators that he had been renting a home from Fernandez in Jacksonville’s Biltmore neighborhood for several years.
Tenon’s original court records said he became involved in the conspiracy on Jan. 4, 2022 -- just over a month before Bridegan was killed.
Investigators said when Tenon was arrested on an unrelated felony driving charge in August 2022, they questioned him about Bridegan’s murder and a Ford F-150 truck they had been searching for since the shooting.
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Tenon was later arrested in Bridegan’s murder, and investigators said the single link between Tenon and Bridegan was Fernandez.
In 2023, Tenon pleaded guilty and admitted to being the gunman who killed Bridegan, but he has since backtracked, and a judge granted his motion to withdraw his guilty plea.
Gardner and Fernandez have also both pleaded not guilty. State prosecutors initially said they would be seeking the death penalty against both if they were convicted, but they have since taken the death penalty off the table, with the support of Bridegan’s widow, Kirsten, and his family.