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Jose Luis Pacheco and Mimose Dulcio

Authorities said they identified a body as a Florida woman believed to have been murdered by her estranged husband.

The woman was identified on Tuesday as Mimose Dulcio, 39, nearly a week after remains were found on Nov. 16. Defendant Jose Luis Pacheco, 36, who was arrested Nov. 14 in Hialeah, was originally locked up in a Miami-area jail, but is currently being processed at the Broward County Jail.

“According to detectives with the Broward Sheriff’s Office, the Broward County Medical Examiner’s Office has positively identified the female body recovered on Wednesday, Nov. 16, at 5528 N.W. 204th Street in unincorporated Miami Gardens as 39-year-old Mimose Dulcio,” authorities said in a press statement from Broward sheriff’s PIO Gerdy St. Louis. “The body was located following a missing person/homicide investigation into Dulcio’s disappearance.”

Dulcio was last seen Nov. 10 at around at around 5:30 p.m. near the 400 block of Northwest 30th Avenue in unincorporated Central Broward. She was home. Family reportedly called her disappearance out of character. In addition, concerned loved ones said Dulcio’s belongings were missing and that there were blood and cracks on the TV, according to NBC Miami. Family also found broken windows and credit cards were left behind, according to WPLG.

“Two of her phones, they were broken, bent and they’re shattered, and that’s not like her to leave any of her devices because of what she’s currently going through,” sister Seminta Dulcio told NBC Miami.

She alleged that there was friction between the missing woman and Pacheco, telling WPLG that her sister was supposed to get Pacheco out of the house with an emergency restraining order but was unable to because the courthouse was closed due to Hurricane Nicole.

“She is going through something with an individual, and I don’t take these words lightly, I am going to call him a monster,” Seminta Dulco reportedly said. She told NBC Miami that no one could get a hold of Pacheco for approximately 10 hours on Nov. 11. Authorities put out a missing person alert for Mimose the following day.

Pacheco claimed not to know what happened to his missing, estranged wife, deputies said. But investigators believe he actually killed her in their home and moved her body.

“During their investigation, detectives met with Pacheco, who stated he had not seen or heard from Dulcio in a couple of days and that they were in the process of getting a divorce,” the sheriff’s office said in announcing his arrest. “Through investigative methods, a search warrant was obtained for the couple’s home and shared vehicle. During the search, investigators found evidence that suggested Dulcio had been murdered in the couple’s home, and that her body had been transported in the couple’s shared vehicle and disposed of in an unknown location.”

MISSING PERSON UPDATE: Detectives have arrested Jose Luis Pacheco in the disappearance and murder of missing person, Mimose Dulcio. Anyone with info on suspicious activities involving the couple’s shared 2018 white Dodge Charger should call 954-321-3246. https://t.co/X6dNaRVPhb pic.twitter.com/sp8JDjnSCD

— Broward Sheriff (@browardsheriff) November 15, 2022

“On behalf of the City of Fort Lauderdale, our hearts are with the family and loved ones of Mimose Dulcio,” Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean J. Trantalis said on Nov. 15 of Dulcio, a city employee. “According to law enforcement, an arrest was made this morning in connection with her disappearance. We pray for peace for Mimose and her family during this time.”

Pacheco faces a count of second-degree murder.

Jerry Lambe contributed to this report.

[Image of Pacheco via Miami-Dade Corrections & Rehabilitation; image of Dulcio via Broward Sheriff’s Office]

The post Authorities Identify Body as Missing Woman Believed to Have Been Murdered by Estranged Husband first appeared on Law & Crime.

Four months on, the realization has settled in for Brazil’s Larissa Pacheco: she is the PFL women’s lightweight champion. She’s the woman with the target on her back this season.

Pacheco (19-4) is the woman who dethroned promotional darling Kayla Harrison in the PFL playoffs last year. And she’s not numb to the fact that she’s now the woman everyone is chasing.

“Yeah, it’s certainly sunk in, and [there’s] a lot of work to do,” Pacheco told Cageside Press in a recent exclusive interview. “A lot more work to do now that I’m the target for everyone else in the division.”

With Harrison, a two-time PFL women’s lightweight champion, having beaten Pacheco twice before, there was some sentiment in the aftermath of their third meeting, where the Brazlian won a unanimous decision, that Kayla may have been overlooking her opponent.

Pacheco doesn’t see it.

“I don’t think she was counting me out. I think she knew this was going to be a different fight. Not different in the way it was, but a tougher fight,” suggested Pacheco. “When you look back at the first two fights, the first two times I competed against her, the conditions I was coming from, not only financially but also physically and to be able to take the result to where I did, I think she kind of understood that I was rolling differently for this one, just in terms of the infrastructure that I had behind me, and the focus and everything else.”

Rather than Harrison underestimating her, Pacheco believes that “she was expecting a tougher fight than the first two prior encounters.”

Harrison is not back in the PFL regular season this year, which sees the women’s lightweight division gone, replaced by featherweight, where Pacheco will look to claim a second title.

“I wouldn’t say I’m disappointed. This is something I could already see coming for a while, even before the championship last year. I didn’t think she was going to be joining the league again in 2023,” Pacheco said of Harrison’s absence. “I’m just looking to keep doing my job.”

As intertwined as their stories are, Pacheco added, “for me, PFL does not mean Kayla Harrison. That’s kind of how I see it. I’m just going to put my head down, keep doing my job, and I’m sure we’ll fight each other down the line again.”

In her opening bout of the regular season, Larissa Pacheco has drawn Julia Budd, a formidable opponent who competed in Strikeforce and Invicta FC before capturing the featherweight title in Bellator MMA, and defending it three times.

“I see this as a good fight for myself, I’m ready for it, I don’t anticipate major issues with this one,” said Pacheco, who noted that she is “well familiar” with Budd’s body of work, “even before joining the PFL. She’s fought tough competition, she’s held belts at other noteworthy organizations.”

It’s the chance to claim a title in a second division that is helping drive Pacheco these days.

“I definitely see this particular opportunity as a great one to write my name in PFL’s history books,” Pacheco told us. “It’s a different weight class, I’d be the first person in PFL history, man or woman, to hold two belts in two different weight classes. So very much looking forward to it.”

Watch our full interview with PFL 2022 women’s lightweight champion Larissa Pacheco above. Pacheco moves to featherweight when the regular season kicks off for the weight class at PFL 2 on April 7, 2022.

The post Larissa Pacheco Says “PFL Does Not Mean Kayla Harrison” Ahead of Return at PFL 2 appeared first on Cageside Press.

Associate Justice Clarence Thomas sits during a group photo of the Justices at the Supreme Court in Washington, DC on April 23, 2021.

The Supreme Court of the United States ruled 8-1 to overturn the conviction of Darrell Hemphill, who was convicted of the 2006 fatal shooting of 2-year-old David Pacheco Jr. Justice Sonia Sotomayor penned the majority ruling, holding that Hemphill’s Sixth Amendment rights had been violated when prosecutors introduced statements made by a different man during a plea deal; Justice Clarence Thomas was the lone dissenter.

Pacheco had been sitting in a minivan when he was killed by a stray bullet during a street fight in the Bronx. Eyewitness accounts of the shooting led police to a nearby apartment where they found matching bullets and the blue sweater the shooter had been seen wearing. Three individuals were ultimately identified as having been involved with the shooting: Ronnell Gilliam, Nicholas Morris, and Darrell Hemphill.

Morris entered into a plea deal for the shooting, then recanted, saying Hemphill had really been the shooter. Morris later pleaded guilty to gun possession charges in connection with the same incident. Years later, DNA evidence matched Hemphill and the blue sweater, and Hemphill was then indicted for the murder.

At Hemphill’s trial, he blamed Morris for the shooting. Hemphill’s lawyer noted that officers had recovered 9mm ammunition from Morris’ nightstand hours after a 9mm bullet killed Pacheco. Moreover, a prosecution witness gave evidence that implicated Morris as the shooter, though Morris himself did not testify.

In an effort to put context to Hemphill’s defense, prosecutors introduced parts of the transcript of Morris’ plea allocution to the gun possession charge as evidence to rebut Hemphill’s defense. Hemphill’s counsel objected on the grounds that allowing the plea allocution violated Hemphill’s rights under the confrontation clause, as Morris was unavailable for cross-examination.

The trial judge ruled that that Hemphill’s case had “opened the door” to allow Morris’ plea allocution is as evidence that was “reasonably necessary” to “correct” the “misleading impression” created by Hemphill’s defense case. Hemphill was convicted and sentence to 25 to life in prison.

Both the New York state intermediary and highest appellate courts affirmed, but SCOTUS reversed. Justice Sotomayor penned the 14-page opinion for the majority, holding that the trial judge had been wrong to allow one-sided evidence simply to put Hemphill’s defense in context. She wrote:

For Confrontation Clause purposes, it was not for the judge to determine whether Hemphill’s theory that Morris was the shooter was unreliable, incredible, or otherwise misleading in light of the State’s proffered, unconfronted plea evidence. Nor, under the Clause, was it the judge’s role to decide that this evidence was reasonably necessary to correct that misleading impression. Such inquiries are antithetical to the Confrontation Clause.

Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a brief concurrence, which focused on the idea that a criminal defendant such as Hemphill might, in some contexts, waive their rights under the Confrontation Clause. Although a defendant could impliedly waive their rights by “engag[ing] in a course of conduct that is incompatible with a demand to confront adverse witnesses,” they wrote, Hemphill had not done so.

Alito wrote that while “evidence that is misleading as to the real facts does not, in itself, indicate a decision regarding whether any given declarant should be subjected to cross-examination,” there are still “other circumstances” under which a defendant’s choice to introduce certain evidence could be considered a waiver of the right to confront.

In a 10-page dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas broke with the Court by focusing on the procedure underlying Hemphill’s appeal. Because Hemphill failed to raise his Sixth Amendment claim before the New York Court of Appeals (New York’s highest court), Thomas opined that federal courts have no jurisdiction over the issue under 28 U. S. C. §1257.

Thomas, however, noted that the Court has not been particularly faithful to this rule of late, writing, “our cases have since departed from this principle without squaring that departure with §1257’s unqualified text.” Remarking that, “For nearly 200 years, this Court adhered to the proper presentation requirement as a jurisdictional rule,” and had “routinely dismissed cases for lack of jurisdiction when the petitioner failed to properly present his federal claim to the state court.” Thomas called the Court’s change of course “a grave matter.”

[image via Erin Schaff/POOL/AFP via Getty Images]

The post SCOTUS Rules 8-1 to Overturn Conviction of Child Killer, Only Justice Thomas Dissents first appeared on Law & Crime.