Charlie Adelson Appeal Goes to Court — Did a Tainted Jury Pool Doom His Defense? | Dan Markel Murder
Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski | True Crime News & Commentary
True Crime Today
3.3 • 912 Ratings
🗓️ 5 February 2026
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Charlie Adelson wasn't in the courtroom today. He's sitting in a South Dakota prison while his appellate attorneys argued that his murder conviction should be reversed. The hearing before Florida's First District Court of Appeal lasted 40 minutes and centered on one core question: Was the Tallahassee jury pool so poisoned by pretrial publicity that a fair trial was impossible? Defense attorney Michael Ufferman laid out the numbers. Of 130 prospective jurors questioned during voir dire, 54 had formed an opinion about the case. Fifty-three of them believed Charlie was guilty. Jurors were caught talking about the case after being instructed not to. Ufferman argued the fix was simple — strike the panel, move the trial, start over. Instead, the trial proceeded and Charlie was convicted of first-degree murder, conspiracy, and solicitation in the 2014 killing of his former brother-in-law, FSU law professor Dan Markel.
The state pushed back forcefully. Assistant Attorney General Robert Charles Lee argued Charlie accepted the jury, never filed a written venue motion, and waived his right to complain. His blunt assessment: any jury in Florida would have reached the same verdict. The judges questioned both sides but issued no ruling. Charlie's mother Donna Adelson also has an appeal pending following her own conviction last year. The Markel case now moves into its final legal chapter.
#CharlieAdelson #DanMarkel #AdelsonAppeal #TrueCrime #MurderForHire #DonnaAdelson #FloridaAppeal #AdelsonTrial #MarkelMurder #JusticeForDan
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | is Hidden Killers with Tony Bruske. |
| 0:02.7 | Here now, Tony Bruske. |
| 0:07.0 | Charlie Adelson got his day in appellate court. |
| 0:12.4 | He just wasn't there to see it. |
| 0:18.0 | He's sitting in a South Dakota prison about 1,500 miles away from a Tallahassee |
| 0:23.6 | courtroom where three judges spent 40 minutes deciding whether his murder conviction should stand. |
| 0:28.9 | The question on the table was pretty straightforward, even if the answer isn't, |
| 0:34.0 | did the man convicted of orchestrating Dan Markel's murder get a fair trial, |
| 0:38.3 | or was he doomed before the first witness took the stand? |
| 0:41.9 | His attorney says the jury pool was poisoned by a decade of media coverage. |
| 0:47.6 | The state says that doesn't really matter. |
| 0:52.0 | Any jury in Florida would have convicted him. And honestly, that's probably the most |
| 0:55.9 | telling thing either side has said really throughout the entire morning of proceedings when this was going on. |
| 1:03.2 | The hearing took place at 10 a.m. before the First District Court of Appeal, three judges, |
| 1:07.0 | Lori S. Roe, Thomas D. Wincor, and M. Cremley Thomas presided. |
| 1:13.5 | Each side got about 20 minutes. Charlie's appellate attorneys, Michael Offerman, and |
| 1:17.3 | Lori Niles out of Tallahassee, presented his case. The state was represented by assistant |
| 1:22.0 | attorney Gerald Robert Charles Lee and Charlie himself nowhere to be found. |
| 1:29.1 | Incarcerated, appellants don't get to attend oral arguments. |
| 1:33.2 | So he sat in a cell in South Dakota, where he was transferred after extortion threats at his Florida facility, |
| 1:41.8 | while lawyers debated whether the system that put him there was fundamentally |
| 1:46.3 | broken. So what happened in trial? Did Charlie get any traction? We're going to get into all that. |
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