Kayla De Pena booking photo Orange County Sheriff’s Office
A juror who lied and derailed a resentencing trial where a man faced the death penalty in Florida was held in contempt of court and thrown into jail for the longest possible sentence on Thursday, arrest records reviewed by Law&Crime show.
Kayla De Peña was arrested and hauled into jail by sheriffs in an Orange County courtroom on Thursday after Judge Mark Blechman laced into her for her actions last fall that upset the resentencing of convicted murderer Bessman Okafor.
“You have thwarted justice more than anybody I have seen in my 42 years as an attorney. Your case deserves the maximum sentence that I can impose,” Blechman told the 26-year-old woman, according to Orlando ABC affiliate WFTV.
If it were possible to sentence De Peña to serve a day in prison for each one that the jury heard evidence in Okafor’s case before she derailed it — 280 days total — the judge said he would have done so.
But under the law, he couldn’t.
He also told her he would have hit her with a fine of $200,000, the equivalent to the costs the trial created overall.
But he couldn’t do that either.
Instead, he sentenced De Peña to 179 days in prison, the maximum sentence allowable, and fined her just $500 for contempt of court.
A new resentencing trial for Okafor is set to take place Jan. 16.
When Bill Gladson, the prosecutor overseeing the Okafor case spoke to reporters outside of the Orange County courtroom Thursday, he didn’t mince words.
“Honestly, what she did was disgusting,” Gladson said.
The attorney did not immediately return a request for comment by Law&Crime on Friday. He and fellow prosecutors will have just a few weeks to prepare and sort through hundreds of new jurors.
The problems for De Peña started in earnest last October when she was summoned to serve as a juror in the Okafor resentencing case.
Okafor, 38, killed fellow Floridian Alex Zaldivar, 19, in 2012 as Zaldivar was preparing to testify against him in a separate matter tied to an execution-style killing and home invasion.
Okafor was convicted in 2015 for the murder and sentenced to death. The Florida Supreme Court later overturned the death sentence, based on a change in the law regarding a unanimous jury being required for death penalty recommendations, and ordered him resentenced.
Last April, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a new law that eliminated the unanimous criteria and only required an 8-person majority out of 12.
Jurors heard 195 days of testimony before beginning deliberations for the resentencing. After six hours of deliberations, the jury had not yet decided on whether to sentence Okafor to die. One juror said they needed to sleep on it for a night, though the group was close to a decision.
Testifying in court this week, one juror said he recalled how De Peña “thumped the table and sat back” clearly unhappy when she learned she might have to return to deliberate another day, WFTV reported.
Another juror, Tayla Lira, said De Peña was upset because she needed to be at work that night and when jurors were told they would be sequestered, De Peña lashed out.
“She said she was about to make that a mistrial,” Lira said, adding De Peña had slept through most of the deliberations.
In November, De Peña told the court she had discussed the case with a friend and that made her ability to be impartial impossible. On Thursday, she told Blechman that was a lie and that she made it up to get out of jury service and that at the time, she was struggling financially.
She said she was “extremely sorry” for her actions and apologized to members of Zaldivar’s family.
Zaldivar’s father had no sympathy for the woman, curtly telling WFTV, “That girl doesn’t give a damn.”
“I can’t wait to see her mug shot,” Rafael Zaldivar said.
An attorney for De Peña could not immediately be reached on Friday.
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