FRBS drops death penalty for Florida man accused of killing wife in Spain

MIAMI – The death penalty is not hanging over a Fort Lauderdale man accused of killing his estranged wife in Spain.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami said this week: “We do not intend to seek the death penalty against the defendant in this case.”

Federal prosecutors did not elaborate on their decision in the David Knezewicz murder case, which they reached after asking officials from the Justice Department’s Capital Science Division about the final decision last month, according to a recent court hearing. Prosecutors handed down the non-death sentence in Miami federal court on Tuesday, a day after Joe Biden left the White House and Donald Trump was sworn in as president.

For Knezevich, it was a small measure of comfort. He was still serving a life sentence if he was found guilty at trial for the kidnapping and murder of his wife Ana Knezevich Henao in February last year, when he was reported missing in Madrid. Because if faced, he still faces a life sentence. . Her body has never been found. This made the international murder case a challenge for FBI agents and prosecutors, who built largely circumstantial evidence against Knezevich.

“I’m glad the government recognizes this is not the death penalty,” his Miami defense attorney Jayne Weintraub said Thursday.

In December, Knezevich, 36, pleaded not guilty to charges of kidnapping and murdering his wife Ana, 40, on February 2, 2024. The kidnapping resulted in the death of his wife. He was also charged with foreign domestic violence resulting in the death of a U.S. citizen and foreign murder, according to the amended indictment.

Knezevich, who has been held at the Miami Federal Detention Center since his arrest after he was deemed a flight risk to his native Serbia and other locations, is attempting to get bond again at a hearing in early February.

The kidnapping charges marked a dramatic turn in the events surrounding Ana’s disappearance from her Madrid apartment, on charges of causing death.

Fight Over Millions On Broward Properties

Knezevich, who ran a high-tech business, owned millions of dollars in Broward County Residential Real Estate, his wife from Columbia, acquired over the course of their 13-year marriage. They were fighting over these and other assets when she left for Spain in late December 2023.

Prosecutors say the defendant told the court’s Probation Department that he sold seven residential properties in Broward for about $6.7 million between December 2023 and February 2024, then linked to his estranged wife’s disappearance in Spain. After the sale, it was reported to be worth about $2.5 million, he said.

Knezevich is accused of leaving Miami for Serbia in late January 2024, and prosecutors say he rented a car to track down his wife in Spain.

The FBI said it believed her husband carried Ananezevic’s body in a suitcase in her Madrid apartment building that night, citing security camera footage of him exiting the elevator.

In August, the FBI joined Spanish and Italian authorities in searching for bodies in the forests north of Vicunza, Italy. There, a GPS alert on my husband’s rented Peugeot 308 suggested he had taken a detour on a return trip from Spain to Serbia.

However, his wife’s body was never found.

“What we do know is that the evidence supports that she was killed between Spain and Serbia,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jessica Obenauf told U.S. District Judge Cass last week. Leanne Williams said at a previous hearing. The judge handed prosecutors fingerprints, cellphones, photos, videos and other evidence from the FBI and Spain’s national police.

For several months, the FBI has been coordinating an investigation with Spanish authorities, gathering suspicious security camera footage of David Knezevic’s presence at a Madrid hardware store and her apartment shortly before her disappearance. . A rental car that offers a cover-up. However, authorities found no traces of blood or evidence of a struggle in his estranged wife’s Madrid apartment after she was reported missing.

Brothers, family stopped by Mia after Portugal’s trip to Spain

Another controversial issue arose during a hearing in federal court last week. On January 7, customs agents stopped Knezevich’s brother and his family at Miami International Airport after returning from a vacation trip to Portugal and Spain.

According to Knezevich’s lawyer, customs officials pulled the brothers aside because they suspected they had hidden “ham” in their luggage from a trip abroad. They stated that the real reason of the Customs and Border Protection agents was to establish a pretext for his brother, Ugrzesa Knezevic, to seize the brother’s laptop and mobile phone.

Knezevich’s attorney told Judge Williams that federal investigators had discovered that the brothers’ electronic devices contained confidential attorney-client information as the brothers were helping their defense team prepare for trial. I asked them to stop the search.

In a court motion, Knezevich’s attorneys argued that “[the brother]has no real legitimate reason to have his electronic devices stopped, detained, harassed, interrogated, or seized at the request of[federal prosecutors]in this case.” The sole purpose of obtaining evidence for use in a pending criminal case.”

Customs officials say they can search passengers’ luggage when they arrive from overseas as long as they have “reasonable cause” without a warrant or probable cause.

Knezevich’s defense team asked Williams to bar investigators from searching his brother’s laptop and cellphone until they have had a chance to review the basis for the MIA seizure, a request that federal prosecutors oppose. I requested it.

Prosecutors argued in court filings that the brother’s customs border search was legal and that the FBI later obtained a search warrant for his devices. They also said a “filter team” had been set up to ensure that attorney-client information about the brothers’ electronic devices was not shared with prosecutors and investigators in the case.

family is coming back

After Mia, his brother, his wife, and two children, all U.S. citizens, all U.S. citizens, all U.S. citizens, all U.S. citizens cleared customs, according to a defense motion in Miami federal court.

“Border agents told (the brother) and his family that they wanted to see if the family brought ham from Spain to the United States,” the motion states. “Border agents searched the family’s carry-on bags and backpack but did not find Hamm.”

Knezevich’s brother was further questioned by five Homeland Security agents, who asked him about his trip to Spain and then told him he was stopped because he was Serb – a customs officer. Contrary to the suggestion that it is to look for what is said to be “. ham. “

When Homeland Security agents asked Knezevich’s brother to provide a passcode to his cell phone, he refused. One of the agents told the brother that the agency would keep his phone for several months.

At a hearing in Miami federal court last week, Williams raised questions based on Mia’s Knezevic brother’s customs border stop.

Judge: The man stopped because he was a brother.

“Let me say this search, or this first stop, was not designed to protect the border,” Williams said in court on Jan. 15. The man was stopped because he was the defendant’s brother. As it is, the state of the law regarding border encounters is what it is. ”

This week, Williams denied his defense team’s request to stop seizing his brother’s cellphone, but prosecutors used the government’s “filter team” to view confidential attorney-client information on the device. I said that I have to make sure that I can’t do that.

But in her order, the judge said prosecutors “need to be prepared to explain why the search warrant is sealed.”