Rashad Murphy Cries As Aunt & Adoptive Mother Testifies In Death Penalty Hearing

Rashad Murphy is the oldest of the four men convicted of murdering gang leader and rapper Charles "Julio Foolio" Jones Jr. in Tampa, Florida. The jurors who convicted the men last week must now decide whether to recommend life in prison or the death penalty, and they heard testimony on Wednesday (May 13) from Murphy's aunt who adopted him as her son. Murphy, 32, put his head down and wept as she testified about 01:50 Rashad's father "There's really not much for me to tell, except that he has been very active in his life, but I know him." "Okay. When you said he was not very active in his life, are you referring to being a father figure for Rashad?" "That's correct." "Would it be correct to say he was not a good father?" "That's a tough call, because all I just know is that he wasn't active. I don't want to say good or bad, because that's categorizing someone that I haven't been around." 02:50 "What about Rashad's mother?" "Did she have some drug problems?" "Yes, she did." "And was there a time when Rashad was very young that he was actually placed in foster home?" "That's correct." 06:51 "Now, do you after you were able to have contact with with him, and after the first year and a half, where did you become aware of of some activities that Rashad was involved in, sports, boxing, things of that nature?" "Yes." 07:20 foster mom got him into boxing "he did boxing matches, and he was the champion for his age group. That's why I think the age nine or 10 sticks out because he was very young and was good, and he made it. He made it. He was the champion for that state and his age group." Murphy starts to cry 08:31 "What kind of father have you observed him to be?" "He's an excellent dad. He's overprotective. I know that of his kids, based on what he's been through, very overprotective. He, as far as the boys, he loved having them in sports. The girls was he dotes over there. You know, Daddy's girls is what he has." 10:39 "And he went to Seventh Day Adventist school, elementary school, because my mother taught there for well, she was teachers aide there for several years, over 20 years. So Christian education and being part of the church was something that my mother ... she definitely kept him in church." 13:17 "Rashad has always been quiet type, individual. So he would keep things to himself, keep his self you know, you have to try to figure out what it's thinking. Oh, think that's just that part of him, that's the strong part of him. So to say that if I saw any changes in him, I couldn't say I just know that he coddled his kids more because they didn't have their matriarch around. He coddled the cousins, everybody he just kept close to." 15:34 "Did you notice him also being affected when his mother died?" "Yes." "Was there a time that you were with Rashad and he you sent him to New Jersey to around 14 to go to school?" "Yes." 17:28 Rashad and Charmaine "Can you describe that relationship?..." "The two were inseparable..." 18:10 "that young puppy love he had that. They had that. So that's how long they've been together." 20:24 cross by Assistant State Attorney Anna Ismay "So when you learned that Rashad Murphy were in foster care, did you work together with the family members that you mentioned so his grandparents and his great grandmother to get him out of the situation he was in?" "Yes, actually, I was there when they were taken. I was there and they would not turn the kids over to us, and we found that unusual, and we thought that we would hear something from and we didn't. And it just, it just went on where we kept seeking ways of trying to find out where these kids are, and they just wouldn't." 22:08 "You had no information about any kind of physical abuse when he was in the custody of your niece, or abuse of him when he was in the foster care system or even afterward, right?" "No." **************************** You can read about the first trial over Julio Foolio's murder here: https://www.legalaffairsandtrials.com...