A Florida man, responsible for the abduction and tragic death of a young girl, has been sentenced to capital punishment.
Harrel Braddy, now 76, kidnapped five-year-old Quatisha Maycock and her mother Shandelle back in November 1998.
In a brutal assault, Braddy attacked Shandelle, choking and beating her before confining her in his car’s trunk and leaving her body in a secluded area near Palm Beach.
Fearing identification, Braddy abandoned Quatisha alive in the Everglades, near a notorious area known as Alligator Alley.
Tragically, Quatisha was found lifeless two days later in a canal, reportedly after a fatal encounter with alligators.
Following a jury trial, Braddy was convicted of first-degree murder and received a death sentence in 2007.
However, he is now back in court after changes to Florida’s death penalty laws reopened his sentencing – raising the possibility that he could still avoid execution.
Quatisha Maycock, five, died in November 1998 after being kidnapped by Harrel Braddy in Florida
Braddy, 76, is back in court and again faces the death penalty for the five-year-old girl’s death. Jury selection began Monday in Miami-Dade Circuit Court
Braddy was found to have kidnapped the pair after he befriended the mother at church on November 7, 1998.
Prosecutors said that he targeted Shandelle after she had repeatedly rejected his romantic advances.
According to investigators, Braddy attacked Quatisha. Shandelle survived the attack, but Quatisha did not.
Braddy told detectives that he had left the child near a section of Interstate 75 in Broward County, best known as Alligator Alley.
He claimed to have left Quatisha alive on the side of the road at a bridge crossing over a canal.
Braddy explained that he had done this because he was worried that Quatisha would tell people what he had done to her mother.
In 2007, Braddy was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death following a jury trial
He also admitted that he ‘knew’ Quatisha ‘would probably die’, according to court filings.
Quatisha’s body was discovered two days later in a canal by two fishermen.
An autopsy determined that her left arm, which was missing when her body was found, had been bitten off by an alligator postmortem.
The court also heard that Quatisha had suffered alligator bites to her chest and head while still alive, although she was likely unconscious.
The young girl’s body had injuries to her lips, consistent with fish feeding on her corpse, as well as other gator bites.
Quatisha also sustained ‘brush burns’ while she was alive, which would be consistent with falling out of a car and sliding on the road.
It was concluded that she died due to blunt force trauma to the left side of her head.
An autopsy said that Quatisha’s left arm, missing when her body was discovered, had been severed by an alligator after her death
Braddy left the young girl alive near a a section of the Everglades known as Alligator Alley, afraid that she would be able to identify him
In his sentencing order, then-Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Leonard E. Glick described the killing as adults having betrayed their most basic responsibilities.
‘Adults are supposed to protect children from monsters,’ Glick said. ‘They are not supposed to be the monsters themselves.’
Braddy is now back in court after changes to Florida’s death penalty laws reopened his sentencing.
Jury selection began Monday in Miami-Dade Circuit Court, according to the Miami Herald.
In 2016, the state’s death-penalty process was disrupted after the US Supreme Court ruled that Florida’s sentencing system violated the Sixth Amendment right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury.
That was because it allowed judges, rather than juries, to decide whether a defendant should be sentenced to death.
In response, state lawmakers enacted a rewritten statute allowing death sentences to go through as long as it was recommended by 10 out of 12 jurors.
However, the Florida Supreme Court struck down the revision, saying that juries must be unanimous before a death sentence can actually be imposed.
In turn, that ruling opened the door for Braddy to return to court for a resentencing.
