Inset: Daisy Link (Miami-Dade Corrections and Rehabilitation). Background: Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center in Miami (Google Maps).
The Florida woman who made national headlines for becoming pregnant in jail without meeting the father saw her “stand your ground” defense denied due to her “calm and joking” demeanor after allegedly shooting her husband, a judge reportedly ruled.
Lawyers for 30-year-old Daisy Link earlier this month filed a “stand your ground” claim, saying Link shot Pedro Jimenez in 2022 at their Homestead home in self-defense because she was in “fear for her life.” Link is charged with second-degree murder.
“Defendant Link was in a tumultuous relationship with the alleged victim. This relationship was marred by long-term physical abuse and domestic violence,” her lawyer Antonio Tomas wrote in a Aug. 14 filing.
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Tomas cited Florida Statute 776.012 which states in part that a person “is justified in using or threatening to use deadly force if he or she reasonably believes that using or threatening to use such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another.”
A person who uses such force is “justified” and is “immune from criminal prosecution,” Tomas argued.
“The credible evidence in this case supports the theory that Ms. Link shot Mr. Jimenez out of a grave sense of fear and urgency because she thought the alleged victim was going to kill her or cause her great bodily harm,” Tomas wrote.
Link had “reasonable cause to believe that she was in a situation where she had to either defend herself or die,” her lawyer said.
But a judge in a Monday hearing did not buy the argument. Circuit Judge Lody Jean pointed to a Ring camera footage that captured Link saying “I think I hit a major artery; you”ll be fine,” after the shooting WPLG reported.
“One of the key pieces of evidence is the Ring camera and the behavior of the defendant after the shooting, which included a calm and joking demeanor,” Jean said.
Link is next scheduled to appear in court on Monday.
As Law&Crime previously reported, Link became pregnant despite never meeting with the father face to face. Link and Joan Depaz, 25, spoke to local Fox affiliate WSVN from inside the Miami-Dade County Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation last year. She told her family in a phone call on Christmas 2023 that she became pregnant while an inmate in the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center. She delivered the baby girl in June 2024. Family members are raising the baby.
Link previously told her family that she got pregnant after Depaz passed his semen in plastic wrap through an air conditioning vent. In the interview with WSVN, Link and Depaz described how it happened in further detail.
Link said she started speaking with Depaz through air conditioning vents in their cells.
“Being in isolation for so long you begin to spend hours and hours talking to this person, you know, to the point where it’s almost as if you’re in the same room with them,” she said.
Then Depaz professed his desire to become a father after they became romantically involved. Seeing that he is in jail on a first-degree murder charge, it may be a while, if ever, before he’s a free man, he reasoned. So the two hatched a plan. They claimed they tied bedsheets together and ran them through the vents and into their cells.
“I put the semen in Saran Wrap every day like five times a day for like a month straight,” Depaz told the TV station.
Said Link: “He would kind of like roll it up almost like a cigarette and he would attach it to the line that we had in the vent and I would pull it through. From there, I had placed it inside of, you know, the yeast infection applicators? I had placed it inside of there and then from there, yeah, I administered it.”
And just like that, the pair claim, she became pregnant.
The two seemed proud of their feat.
“She’s a miracle baby, she’s a blessing,” Link said.
When asked if he ever physically touched Link, Depaz went Biblical.
“Never, like the Virgin Mary,” he said.
