Death penalty trial begins in 2016 murder of Adam Hilarie
Suzie Schottelkotte @southpolkscene
Mar 10, 2020 at 5:41 PM Mar 11, 2020 at 7:04 AM
Andre Warner, the first of the four co-defendants to stand trial, is the only one facing the death penalty. His trial before Circuit Judge Jalal Harb is expected to continue for three weeks.
BARTOW – Andre Warner is sitting before a jury now — on trial for first-degree murder and facing the death penalty – solely because a co-defendant in the case, Hailey Rose Bustos, told detectives Warner killed Adam Hilarie in a 2016 home-invasion robbery, a defense lawyer told jurors Tuesday.
"In her own words ... she is hoping that by testifying against Mr. Warner, she will avoid a life sentence," Bartow defense lawyer Robert Norgard said in opening statements of Warner's trial. "Miss Bustos has essentially said that she is doing everything she can to get a favorable plea deal from the state, and that's her motivation."
But Assistant State Attorney Kristie Ducharme told jurors that Bustos initially told detectives she had gone on a date with Hilarie, but he had dropped her off and that was all she knew.
It wasn't until later that she reluctantly implicated her three friends – Warner, 29, Joshua Ellington, 29, and Gary Gray, 34, she said.
"She told the detectives that Andre Warner was the person responsible for shooting and killing Adam Hilarie," Ducharme said, "and you're going to hear that the reason she was not forthright in the beginning was because she was scared, and she even makes the statement, 'I'm dead.'"
Bustos, 21, had just turned 18 in August 2016 when she and Hilarie connected on the Plenty of Fish dating website, and they arranged to meet later that day. Bustos had created her profile on the website only days earlier after talking with a friend who had said she'd gotten money from men she'd met that way, Ducharme said.
A month earlier, Hilarie, 27, had broken up with his longtime girlfriend, with whom he shared a 5-year-old daughter, and he had posted his profile on the dating website, Ducharme said.
During their date, Bustos and Hilarie and gone by his apartment, and after he had dropped her off, Bustos had told Warner, Ellington and Gray about the things in his apartment that they could take, she said.
About 3 a.m. on Aug. 17, Bustos rode with her friends to Hilarie's Auburndale apartment, directing them how to get there, the prosecutor said. Bustos told detectives Warner and Gray went inside, and upon returning to the car, they talked about having shot Hilarie.
"This defendant, Andre Warner, thought it was really funny how Adam Hilarie was begging for his life," Ducharme told jurors.
Before they left, according to Auburndale police reports, they took three televisions, an Xbox video game system, some marijuana and liquor, jewelry, cash and Hilarie's iPhone from his apartment.
In his opening statement, Norgard said the state's information about how the crime unfolded can be traced to Bustos.
"When Miss Bustos told the police that story," he said, "she was telling them a story that she felt that she would not even be charged."
He said she minimized her involvement and that Ellington, her good friend, Norgard said.
"That is what's going on," he said. "Miss Bustos thought that the story she told, she wouldn't even go to jail. That was Story No. 2 – a story designed to get her out of trouble and keep her from going to jail."
But Bustos, like Warner, Gray and Ellington, is charged with first-degree murder, robbery with a firearm, conspiracy to commit armed robbery and burglary with a weapon. She faces life imprisonment if convicted. Her case has not been set for trial.
Warner, the first of the four co-defendants to stand trial, is the only one facing the death penalty. His trial before Circuit Judge Jalal Harb is expected to continue for three weeks.
Warner has been held in the Polk County Jail without bail since his arrest in August 2016.
Suzie Schottelkotte can be reached at suzie.schottelkotte@theledger.com or 863-533-9070. Follow her on Twitter @southpolkscene.