ST. LUCIE COUNTY, Fla. — Eight years after being sentenced to death for shooting and killing St. Lucie County Sgt. Gary Morales, Eriese Tisdale will be back in court to attempt to be removed from death row.
Jury selection for a new sentencing hearing begins Monday.
In February of 2013, Tisdale shot and killed 35-year-old Morales following a traffic stop. Tisdale shot Morales while he was still inside his patrol car. Morales left behind a wife and two children.
His brother, Ken Morales, said Gary loved his job and served St. Lucie County for 13 years. Working in law enforcement runs in the family.
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"He would always see my dad come home with his badge and his gun, and Gary would have the little costumes with his own badge and gun. I think that just instilled it in him," Ken Morales said.
In 2015, a jury voted 9 to 3 in favor of recommending the death penalty. At the time, the law only required a “majority” vote by jurors in favor of the death penalty for a judge to impose it. The following year, a judge sentenced him to death.
However, between the time Tisdale waited to be sentenced and the sentence being handed down, Florida experienced a series of changes to its death penalty laws.
Tisdale's sentencing was delayed in 2016 after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Florida's death penalty system unconstitutional. The state then passed a new law that required at least 10 of 12 jurors to recommend the death penalty. But that law was ruled unconstitutional, and in 2017, Gov. Rick Scott signed a new law requiring unanimous jury verdicts in death penalty cases.
Due to these changes in Florida's death penalty laws, Tisdale won an appeal to his sentence in 2018, earning a new sentencing hearing that begins next week.
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Ken Morales says his family dreads having to relive one of the worst moments of their past.
"I thought once the judge made his decision, that was it. I didn’t think this would happen 11 years later," Morales said. "Sometimes I think the ones making the laws haven’t experienced what we've experienced."
But the laws continued to change. In 2023, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a new death penalty law after Nikolas Cruz was sentenced to life in prison instead of the death penalty after killing 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland. The new law makes it easier to impose the death penalty, requiring only eight jurors to vote in favor of it for a judge to impose it.
State Attorney Tom Bakkedahl said this means eight of Tisdale’s new jurors would need to vote in favor of death to uphold Tisdale’s death sentence.
Ken Morales said he does not want to be back in the courtroom.
"I know how my brother was shot. I know how many times he was shot. I don’t need to hear it again," Morales said.
If Tisdale's death sentence were to be replaced with a life sentence, Morales said that would at least keep his family from having to worry about future changes in death penalty laws.
"As long as he doesn’t get out," Morales said. "Whether you go with the death penalty or life in prison, either way, just don’t let him out. Leave him in prison."
WPTV reached out to Tisdale's public defender for a statement and is awaiting a response.
St. Lucie County Sheriff Keith Pearson would not do an on-camera interview, but issued a brief statement saying, "If anyone deserves the death penalty, it is Tisdale."
