Prosecutors: Witness in Miami murder case found

Florida prosecutors confirmed in a hearing Friday that their key witness in the murder case of a former University of Miami football player is alive and was contacted Thursday by officers where he lives in Kentucky.

ESPN reported Thursday that, despite prosecutors stating July 17 that they tried every effort to locate 81-year-old Paul Conner and had a report from a commercial database he was dead, journalists found Conner alive at his apartment in Louisville.

Conner is the only eyewitness in the case against former Miami football player Rashaun Jones, who is facing second-degree murder charges in the 2006 shooting of teammate Bryan Pata. Jones, who was arrested in 2021, has pleaded not guilty.

Miami assistant state attorney Cristina Diamond told Florida 11th Circuit Court Judge Cristina Miranda that, after the ESPN story was published, her lead detective reached out to police in Louisville and asked them to go to Conner's last-known address -- where ESPN reporters had found him.

"They were able to make contact with Paul Conner. So at this time, what I can tell the court is that Paul Conner is alive," Diamond said, adding that she had reviewed the officer's body camera footage. "I think the state needs to do a little bit of further investigation. It appears that he was very confused and is not certain what the case is about."

When ESPN reporters interviewed Conner on Aug. 25, he said he did not remember details about the case. Miranda had ruled in July that, assuming Conner was dead, the state could present jurors a videotape of prior testimony he gave in 2022 in a bond hearing in the case in lieu of having him testify in person.

If a determination is made that Conner is not competent to testify, she said, "we may still be in the same situation."

Conner first spoke to police shortly after the Nov. 7, 2006, shooting, and he picked Jones out of a police lineup. Police reinterviewed him in 2020. Conner also recounted what he saw at the 2022 bond hearing and in a 2023 deposition with attorneys.

At the time of the shooting, Conner lived in the same apartment complex as Pata. He said during his 2022 testimony that he heard a "pop" and saw someone "jogging" away from the parking lot entrance near where Pata, a likely high pick in the 2007 NFL draft, was shot once in the head.

How the confirmation of Conner's status affects the case, which is scheduled for trial Oct. 6, is to be determined after attorneys argued in court Friday about what steps to take next regarding questioning Conner and going over the evidence of the state's prior efforts to find him.

Jones' attorney Sara Alvarez told Miranda that she wanted to request a hearing to determine if prosecutors violated the rules of evidence, saying she thought the false conclusion of Conner's death "may have been intentional."

Diamond rebutted that accusation, saying Miami-Dade officers made multiple attempts to reach Conner.

"This is our key witness in the case. This is somebody we want," Diamond told the judge. "The defense is accusing me of making misrepresentations to the court. Every representation made to the court was based upon a conversation with an officer who I was prepared to have testify."

Diamond was referring to officers from the Louisville Police Department who she said went to Conner's address over the summer and "spoke to someone but believed it was not the witness." She said she had a copy of the body camera footage as well. She said those officers told her they also spoke to someone with the apartment's leasing office who did not find Conner in their records.

She said they did not locate a death certificate in Kentucky but relied on the third-party commercial database that stated Conner was deceased. Jones' counsel asked for a copy of that report along with other records that would verify the state's efforts.

The Louisville officers did not testify Friday, as the judge decided to give the attorneys some time to correspond with each other and decide how they wanted to proceed.

ESPN had asked for records or information from the Louisville Police Department regarding efforts to locate Conner, and a department spokesman said there were no records of any officer going to Conner's address this summer prior to a July 22 request from a former colleague who had called for a welfare check on Conner after being contacted by ESPN reporters.

ESPN made multiple requests to police and the Miami-Dade State Attorney for records of their efforts to find Conner. After initially saying they had no documents, they eventually provided an email exchange in which lead detective Juan Segovia wrote that he left 15 voicemail messages with Conner since May. Segovia added that he also sent emails to an address that officers had used with him previously. They also provided a copy of a June 6 letter addressed to Conner at his Louisville address that asked him to contact their office.

They provided an email exchange with a Louisville police officer, but it had no information about Conner or efforts to find him, and they provided a copy of a subpoena for the officer to testify. ESPN reached back out to Louisville police with the name of the officer and a request for further information and is waiting on a response.