Johnathan Quiles, 38, was given three consecutive life sentences, as he was found guilty on Oct. 2 of raping his niece, Iyana Sawyer, and then murdering her in 2019.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The Jacksonville man who was convicted of killing his pregnant niece in September, has filed a letter to the judge who handed down his sentence, asking for a new trial.
Duval County Judge Anthony Salem gave 38-year-old Johnathan Quiles three consecutive life sentences to serve in prison on Oct. 2, as he was found guilty of raping his niece, Iyana Sawyer, and then murdering her and her unborn baby in 2019.
First Coast News obtained the letter that was filed by the Duval County Clerk of Courts on Oct. 24, and begins with Quiles saying he is writing the letter in “good faith.” Quiles says on Sept. 7, 2023, his counsel raised a continuance due to his attorneys not having proper time to view all of the evidence the state was presenting in trial. Quiles writes that “Mr. Davis [Defense Attorney Robert Davis] stated on record that he would like to push the trial back just a week, which would have been on September 18th 2023, to provide me Mr. Quiles with all of the evidence the state had.”
Salem denied Quiles’ request to have the trial be pushed back, just days before jury selection was scheduled to take place in the death penalty trial as he told him to “be prepared.” Quiles says in doing so, he was never once able to view and/or study any of the information that was provided to the court and the jury. He also claimed in the letter that he never knew there was video footage from his former employer, A.C.E. Pick-A-Part, where prosecutors in the case believe he dumped Sawyer’s body after murdering her, nor from Sawyer’s school where she was last seen.
Furthermore, Quiles alleges that there were 24 cameras at the automotive junkyard, but only four were shown at trial and that the other angles showed the “cement plant and the crew that [were] working in it.”
“I never was even made aware of the fact [that] my phone information was available to view until the state provided it during trial,” Quiles said in the letter. “This is how we obtained the information on the John Smith guy [John Anthony] from the job. I’m sure you can recall this being one of many things I raised as an issue during the pretrial. This whole time the information was in my phone and [was] never provided for me to view.”
During trial, prosecutors exposed text messages between Quiles and Sawyer as one message read: “I’m just so in love with you. I’ll kill you and cry.” Quiles stated in the letter that he had pictures and texts that could of provided a “different avenue of attack on the defense side.”
After the state decided to “change their tactics” leading up to the trial in which details are unknown due to a redacted portion of the letter, Quiles says, “this gave my staff [less] than a year to prepare for the case.”
Quiles says further in the letter, on Sept. 10 at 5 p.m., he received some of the depositions taken, in saying that the stack of papers was “more than one foot high,” and was given to him less than 24 hours prior to picking a jury.
Quiles cited parts of Florida Statute Rule 3.600 – grounds for new trial, for the basis of his argument on why he should be granted a new trial. Section ‘a’ and No. 3 of the statute is what Quiles quoted in the letter and can be read below:
“The court shall grant a new trial only if new and material evidence, which, if introduced at the trial would probably have changed the verdict or finding of the court, and which the defendant could not with reasonable diligence have discovered and produced at the trial, has been discovered.”
Section ‘b’ and No. 8 of the statute is what Quiles also quoted in the letter and can be read below:
“The court shall grant a new trial if substantial rights of the defendant were prejudiced because for any other cause not due to the defendant’s own fault, the defendant did not receive a fair and impartial trial.”
In closing remarks in the letter, Quiles says a wire audio recording clip that was played in trial, wasn’t the one that was provided to him to listen to in preparation for the trial. He alleges that the different wire audio clip he heard, had “much more to [it]” than the one that was played a week into trial.
Also in closing remarks, Quiles says Salem allowed the state “ample time to provide [their] evidence but rushed my council on their cross exam.”
“Any objections made by the defense was over ruled with weak ground,” Quiles said. “Any objections raised to the perjury of any witnesses ‘by my council’ that was clearly lying under oath you allowed.”
From this, Quiles cited Florida’s Code of Judicial Conduct Canon 1, which reads, “an independent and honorable judiciary is indispensable to justice in our society. A judge should participate in establishing, maintaining, and enforcing high standards of conduct, and shall personally observe those standards so that the integrity and independence of the judiciary may be preserved. The provisions of this Code should be construed and applied to further that objective.”
“Now know this, if I had all this information a year or two prior to trial, I believe there would of never been a trial, and or the defenses attack would of embarked on a whole different path, challenging much of the information provided by the state,” Quiles said in the letter. “Please your honor I beg you to view this letter in Good Faith and grant me a new trial with the time to view all of such evidence requested.”
At the end of the trial, Quiles was spared the death penalty because the jury couldn’t reach the required eight votes to sentence him to death as posed in Florida’s law.
