FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Jurors are now deliberating after closing arguments were held Monday in the penalty phase for a man who pleaded guilty to fatally shooting a Hollywood police officer in 2021.
Jason Banegas, 22, has already pleaded guilty to first-degree murder for fatally shooting Hollywood police Officer Yandy Chirino in October 2021.
Now, a jury is deciding whether he’ll be executed or get life in prison. The defense team needs to convince at least five of the 12 jurors that Banegas deserves to live.
“She said the defendant did understand right from wrong. He did understand the consequences,” Assistant State Attorney Stephen Zaccor told the jurors Monday.
Chirino was just 28 years old when he was killed while responding to a call about a suspicious person in the 4000 block of North Hills Drive.
Ring camera footage shows Banegas, then 18, on his bike, checking for unlocked car doors.
Police said Banegas shot Chirino twice in the face while resisting arrest, killing him.
Last week, the defense team called experts to the stand who testified about Banegas’ rough upbringing.
“Do we kill Jason Banegas? Must we kill Jason Banegas? Is that the only option that you have? Absolutely not,” Banegas’ defense attorney told the jury Monday.
Last week, Banegas’ youngest sister, Kathryn Benegas, 21, asked jurors to spare her brother’s life, offering an emotional account of what she described as a violent upbringing shared with her brother.
Kathryn Banegas, who works and studies at Miami Dade College, testified that she and Jason Banegas share the same mother, Ingrid Villanueva Pineda, and biological father, Omar Yovany Banegas.
Jurors were told that the household was marked by frequent fights between her parents.
“I would stay quiet and hide,” said Kathryn Banegas when asked what she would do during the arguments.
She described witnessing severe abuse of her mother when she was about 5 or 6 years old.
Kathryn Banegas also spoke about her brother’s emotional struggles and the way he coped through music.
She said he used songwriting to work through heavy emotions, describing a song in which the chorus repeats the idea that “everyone believes there is a monster in him,” even though she believes that deeper lyrics explore his vulnerabilities and the pain tied to his upbringing.
“The solution to not being considered a monster is not breaking into cars with a gun, not shooting a police officer in the line of duty and taking his life,” Zaccor said during closing arguments.
During her testimony last week, Kathryn Banegas said she was the person who gave her brother the gun used in the killing.
She said she deeply regrets it, explaining she gave it to him because she felt safer having him protect her, noting, “everyone around us had guns.”
She also explained why she believes her brother deserves to live.
“He doesn’t deserve to die,” she said. “Mistakes happen when you are emotionally unstable and maybe that is what happened with him. I love him to death and I will love him in my next life.”
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