Can A Jury Unring A Bell? Closings, A Father's Outburst, And A Mistrial Denied In The Frostproof Massacre Trial

Three friends went night fishing outside Frostproof, Florida, on July 17, 2020, and none of them came home. Brandon Rollins, Keven Springfield and Damion Tillman were shot to death near Lake Streety Road. Six years later, Tony "TJ" Wiggins Jr. is on trial in Polk County for three counts of first-degree murder, and the State of Florida is asking for the death penalty. For eight court days this jury heard about an engine, a gun nobody has, a truck's seatbelt and a clock. What it never heard was the man the State's case was first built around: the defendant's own brother.

Near the very end of Day 9, answering the defense, the prosecutor said something to this jury that I have not been able to put down since: "the three people that could tell you, they're dead."

That is this whole case in one sentence. Nobody alive has sat in that witness chair and told these jurors what happened on that road. And on Day 9, in the middle of the defense's closing argument, a man in the gallery tried to tell them anyway. Cyril Rollins, Brandon Rollins' father, stood up and spoke to the room. By the court reporter's account, read into the record later with the jury gone, he said as the jurors were being hurried out that his son "told me he done it." That is his claim, and only his. Minutes later the State itself told the judge: "In this particular trial, there is no evidence whatsoever that Brandon Rollins, the deceased, as he was passing away, made any comments whatsoever that anyone understood as anything."

A jury is supposed to decide a case on the evidence and on nothing else. Every juror swore to that. So the question Day 9 hands us is a hard one, and I am going to ask it plainly all the way through this piece: when a claim that is not evidence gets shouted at a jury in a death-penalty trial, is it enough that each juror tells the judge they can set it aside?

First, the ground rules, because they matter more on this day than on any other. Tony Wiggins is presumed innocent. He is the only person on trial for these killings. His brother, William "Robert" Wiggins, is not on trial for murder: he pleaded guilty under a plea agreement to being an accessory after the fact. There is no verdict. And closing arguments are not evidence. The judge told the jury that twice before a single word was argued, and I am going to hold every lawyer in this piece to it: where a lawyer said something, I tell you a lawyer said it. Everything below is the record of one court day, Monday, September 28, 2026, and my read of it.

"What The Attorneys Say Is Not Evidence"

The day opened with the jury in the back and Judge Jalal A. Harb finishing the charge conference, the meeting where the judge and both sides settle the written instructions the jury gets before it deliberates. Then he walked the schedule: roughly two hours for each side.

Then he turned to the gallery, and I want you to remember this, because of what happened four hours later. "This is your courtroom," he told the families and the public. He asked them to be mindful of the hard work and patience everyone had put into this case over "the last six years." He told them there would be no reaction, "whatsoever," tolerated. If anyone heard something they could not stand, he said, "take yourself outside," "gather yourself," and come back in when ready.

When the jury came in, he gave them the other half of that warning. "What the attorneys say is not evidence, but it's important," he said, and then, as the arguments were about to begin, he read it from the standard instruction: "Please remember that what the attorneys say is not evidence."

Two warnings, then. One to the room: do not react. One to the jury: what you are about to hear is argument, not proof. A judge gives a gallery that kind of speech on a closing day for a reason. By the afternoon Judge Harb would say it out loud: "This is exactly what I was concerned about, and it happened."

"Put In There"

The State did not open its closing on the bodies, or the gun, or the road. It opened on a piece of paper: State Exhibit 472. "And it's a letter," the prosecutor told the jury.

The State says Tony Wiggins wrote that letter to his brother. The prosecutor read it to the jury in order. First, the letter brushes off a version of events it says the writer's father told his lawyers, and dismisses it in language I will not repeat here, ending: "it don't help us at all, bro." Then, the prosecutor said, the writer tells his brother what would help, on the very next page:

"What I need you to do to help us is I need you to write out a statement stating that you lied because you were scared. They were going to pin the murders on you, so you said I did it to get the attention off of you."

"That's not Tony Wiggins asking his brother to tell the truth," the prosecutor told the jury. "He's telling his brother what he needs the statement to say."

The letter, as the State read it, lays out an itinerary for the day: a drop-off, the Dollar General, McDonald's, home. Then it gets specific about what the brother should swear to. "Put in there, you've never seen me with a gun or seen me shoot no one." That the writer owned no guns. "That all the guns and ammo in the safe was yours," and that the writer had no access to it and did not know where the key was. The prosecutor slowed down on two words and made the jury sit with them. "Put in there. Think about those words. Put in there. He's telling his brother exactly what the letter needs to say."

The State argued the letter goes further than a denial. It said the letter even supplies an innocent explanation for Damion Tillman's blood on a truck seatbelt, a story about someone else getting blood on it during a ride. It said the writer wanted the new version "notarized" and sent back to him. And it read a line it clearly considers the heart of the thing: "All I really need to do, other than you not testifying, is to be able to discredit you."

WATCH: DAY 9, PART 32 Frostproof Massacre State Closing Argues Tony Wiggins Scripted His Brother's Recantation | Pt 32

Now here is what I need every reader to hold next to that letter, because the jury could not.

Robert Wiggins pleaded guilty under a plea agreement to being an accessory after the fact. He is not on trial for murder. On Day 6 of this trial he took the witness stand with the jury out of the room and disowned what he had told investigators, saying he told them what they wanted to hear. The State then told the court it would not call him. The jury has never heard him testify.

So on Day 9 the State asked this jury to read a letter it says is the defendant scripting his brother's recantation, when the jury has never heard the recantation, never heard the brother, and never watched anyone cross-examine him. The State broke no rule: the letter is in evidence as Exhibit 472, and a jury only ever sees what the judge lets in. But our job is to show you what the jury did not see as well as what it did. This jury was asked to judge a script for a story it has never heard told.

And one more fact about that letter, which the defense will come back to hard: the State's exhibit is a copy, it is not signed, and the State ties it to Tony Wiggins through what it says about his tattoos. That is where the prosecutor went next.

WATCH THE CLIP: THE LETTER Frostproof Massacre Prosecutor Tells Jurors Tony Wiggins Wrote His Brother To Say He Lied

"Better Change That Story, Buddy"

The letter describes tattoos, and the State walked the jury through them one by one: a skull in a bandana holding two Glocks, a sign reading 27 wrapped in crime scene tape, a rat hanging from a noose, a stop sign that says "stop snitching," and, in the middle of the defendant's forehead, three tally marks the prosecutor told jurors to read as one for each of the three men killed.

Why would a man describe all of that to his own brother in a letter? The State's answer: "I would submit to you that that was a little bit of a warning to his brother. Now you better change your story. Better change that story, buddy." And then: "He's memorialized what he did, and it's right there in front of your eyes, permanently on his body."

That last sentence is a closing argument, not a finding. Three tally marks are ink. What they mean is a reading, and the State chose one. The defense would offer another before the day was out.

Before it left the letter, the State read one more line from it, and it is worth flagging now because of how the defense opened its own argument. The writer, the prosecutor said, told his brother: "We need to do everything we can to tear the state's case apart."

The Missing Ten To Twelve Minutes

Inside Damion Tillman's truck, investigators found a bloody Dollar General bag, Exhibit 73, holding unopened supplies the prosecutor called "the type of things you might use when going fishing at night": bug spray, a light, batteries, a headlamp. That bag led detectives to the nearest Dollar General, where the store camera shows Damion at checkout that Friday night, and the defendant there too. The State said the video shows the two men interacting, an interaction it argued the defendant told police he did not remember.

Then the traffic camera. The State says a red pickup, which it says was Damion's, heads south on Highway 27 at 9:57:49 that night, and a white pickup comes through the same intersection moments later. Using test drives by Sgt. Alexander Tan, the lead detective, the prosecutor did the math in front of the jury: about five minutes for the red truck's route to Lake Streety, seven to seven and a half for the white truck at the speed limit. That puts the red truck at the road around 10:02 and the white truck around 10:05, "just shortly after," the State said, Damion would have arrived. Then what appears to be the same white pickup back at an intersection at 10:06, and, after a drive the State timed at roughly 13 to 14 minutes, a McDonald's drive-through camera at 10:26.

"That missing ten twelve minutes of time," the prosecutor said, "I would submit to you is the window" in which, the State argued, all three men were killed. It told jurors to compare the defendant's two police interviews against that gap: "Compare the missing block of time that he doesn't talk about."

WATCH THE CLIP: THE MISSING MINUTES Frostproof Massacre State Argues Tony Wiggins Can't Account For 10 To 12 Missing Minutes

I said on Day 7 that timing is not identity, and it bears repeating. The arithmetic is fair game in a closing, but look at what it is built from: a detective's test drives, done long after the fact, applied to cameras that show intersections and not the road where the men died. No camera shows Lake Streety Road. The "window" is an inference drawn from its edges, and a jury can accept it or decide it is being asked to fill in the middle itself.

The State then recapped the white truck's history: sold to the defendant for four hundred dollars cash, later passed to Keven Springfield, and its engine traced by the National Insurance Crime Bureau to Damion Tillman's red S10. Add the prior dispute with Brandon Rollins the defendant acknowledged to police, and that is the State's motive thread: an engine, and a grievance.

One Gun, Eleven Casings

The State's firearms case, as the prosecutor laid it out, goes like this. Ten fired 9mm casings at the scene, on the ground and inside the trucks. An FDLE firearms examiner, James Kwong, concluded all ten came from one gun, identified by a distinctive D-shaped firing pin impression the State said, in 2020, only certain Smith & Wesson 9mm models produced. And an eleventh casing, found by the front steps of the trailer the State says was the defendant's, with the same D-shaped mark. "At the defendant's front door," the prosecutor stressed.

Then the ammunition: 9mm rounds bought at a Rural King store eight days before the killings. The prosecutor was careful about who paid. "Well, his girlfriend actually purchased it, to be fair, right? But he's the one carrying it through the store." That girlfriend is Mary Whittemore. She is not on trial for murder: she pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact, and to perjury, and she was sentenced in 2024.

Then the guns. A message the State says the defendant sent his mother before the killings: "Did I show you the new guns I'm picking up later?" Behind a mirror in the trailer, a gun safe, and inside it a shotgun with a gold trigger the prosecutor said "looks similar" to one in the photos. A fingerprint on a gun in that safe, matched to the defendant's prints by Leggie Boone of the sheriff's identification section. And back to the letter, which wanted the brother to say the safe was his: "His fingerprint is found inside that safe."

On DNA, the State was more careful than I expected, and I want to give it credit for that. DNA, the prosecutor told the jury, "can't tell you who fired a gun, right? But it can tell you who was there." It said a casing at the scene "carries DNA concerning this defendant." And then it said something a lot of prosecutors would have left out: "You should also evaluate Williams' DNA finding on one of those shell casings as well, and evaluate it fully." William is Robert, the brother, who pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact and is not on trial for murder. The State itself told the jury the brother's DNA is on a casing from this scene.

Sit with that. The brother pleaded to helping after the fact, recanted with the jury out, and was never called. His DNA finding is on a casing. The jury is told, correctly, to evaluate it fully, with no way to ask him a single question about it. The State's answer is everything else it put up, and that is a real answer. But it is a hole in this record, and the jury has to weigh it without the one witness who could speak to it.

"The One Thing" The State Says You "Can't Get Around"

Every closing has a centerpiece. The State named its own. "Then you have the one thing that I would submit, just can't get around in this case. And that's Damion Tillman's blood on that passenger side seatbelt of Brandi Strickland's truck."

Brandi Strickland lent her white Chevy out that night, and the State says the defendant, his brother and Mary Whittemore rode in it. (Neither the brother nor Whittemore is on trial for murder; each pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact.) The prosecutor argued there is no evidence Damion was ever in that seat, that the stain surfaced days after the killings, and that it sits in the very seat the defendant told investigators he was sitting in. It argued the McDonald's video corroborates him being there. And it argued that the letter's cover story about the seatbelt proves the writer knew the blood needed explaining.

Then premeditation, which is what makes a killing first-degree murder in Florida. The prosecutor read the definition: "a conscious decision to kill, formed before the killing and present when the killing occurs," with time to reflect. The prosecutor argued the five-to-seven-minute drive from the Dollar General was that time, to "a perfect place to ambush somebody. Pitch black, no video cameras." The prosecutor argued that at least ten rounds, fired while turning from one man to the next, show a conscious decision each time.

And then the State asked, one count at a time. "Consider each count separately," the prosecutor said, and asked the jury to find the defendant guilty of first-degree murder for Brandon Rollins, for Keven Springfield, and for Damion Tillman. "Thank you." It was about an hour. The judge sent the jury on a short break.

WATCH THE CLIP: THE COUNT-BY-COUNT ASK Frostproof Massacre Prosecutor Asks Jurors To Find Tony Wiggins Guilty On All Three Murder Counts

"Tear The State's Case Apart"

When the defense stood up after the break, it did not start with the science. It started with the letter's own words. "Tear the state's case apart," defense counsel said. "What does the prosecutor say? Tear the state's case apart. Right?" Then the turn: "Folks, the crime scene techs and the Polk County Sheriff's Office did that."

That was a sharp opening. The defense took a line the State had read as the defendant plotting against the case and turned it into its own thesis: the people who built this case tore it apart themselves.

Then the ground rules the defense wanted the jury to carry. "TJ Wiggins is presumed innocent," counsel said, and "He wears that cloak of innocence throughout this entire trial." The defendant does not have to present evidence, call a witness, or testify, and, counsel said, "you can't hold that against him."

Then the idea the defense wanted in that deliberation room. Reasonable doubt, counsel said, is the kind of doubt that would make you pause before deciding whether a loved one should undergo an experimental medical procedure, or whether to uproot your family and move across the country. "Hesitation is reasonable doubt," counsel told the jury. If you are hesitating, the defense said, "the state has not met its burden," and the verdict has to be not guilty.

WATCH: DAY 9, PART 33 (LIVE 9:00 AM ET, TUE SEPT 29) Frostproof Massacre Defense Closing Says The Seatbelt Stain Was Never Tested As Blood | Pt 33

"That Is Inaccurate"

The defense then went after the science, and it went after it hard. "Forensic science," counsel said, is "really an oxymoron." Either something is science or it is not. Counsel compared the State's analysts to a pharmacy worker who can give you a shot but cannot explain the research behind the vaccine: technicians following a procedure, the defense argued, not scientists who can defend it. DNA analysis, it said, is like twisting an old AM/FM dial through static, and two labs in this case tuned that radio differently.

Then the line that answered the State's centerpiece directly. The defense told the jury that one lab was sent roughly seven casings and chose to swab two. And it said this about the seatbelt and those two casings: there is "a specific test" labs can run to find out whether a piece of evidence "has blood on it as opposed to some other biological substance. That was not done." So when "you hear that there was blood on the seatbelt, that is inaccurate. That is not true."

Then the labs: FDLE and a private lab, DNA Labs International, running the same DNA software in different versions with different background-noise thresholds, 75 at one and five at the other, and, the defense said, a validation that had to be redone, with the lab forced to "run a whole new validation in 2024." Our total DNA, counsel said, is "about a hundred thousand miles long," and these analysts looked at "maybe three hundred feet" of it.

"What they are trying to do and what was done in this case by both of these analysts," counsel said, "was they fed a bunch of assumptions and guesses into a computer program." Then secondary transfer, DNA moving from person to object to person. Then handling: the defense described crime scene technician Michelle Miller opening envelopes in court "using scissors, unsterilized scissors, scissors from the court staff." It said she collected "four hundred items of evidence" at this scene while training someone. "Not observed. Collected."

Here is where I want to stop. Two sets of lawyers stood on the same few inches of seatbelt: the one thing you cannot get around, or a word that is "inaccurate." The difference between them is not rhetoric. A DNA result tells you whose DNA is in a sample. A confirmatory blood test tells you what the substance is. The defense says the second test was never run. When the State answered, in what our record captured, it pointed to where the stain sat in the seatbelt, to the Blue Star spray the technician used to find it (a chemical crime scene technicians use to find possible blood), and to the DNA number. I did not hear it point the jury to a separate confirmatory blood test. Maybe one is in the record from the earlier days and neither side stopped on it. If it is there, the jury has it. If it is not, then the word "blood" in "the one thing you can't get around" is carrying weight the science in this record never tested. That is a question worth asking out loud in a case where the State is asking for death.

"Over 700" Guns

From DNA the defense went to ballistics. Counsel held up an exhibit bag and read the label: "It says forty caliber." Then the other label: "This label says nine millimeter. But the Department of Justice ATF says it's a forty caliber." And the question to the jury: "So is it a 40 caliber or a nine millimeter?"

Counsel put up the examiner's comparison photos and asked whether they even line up, and reminded jurors the examiner conceded on cross there is no universal mathematical formula for a match. Then the number: "He did admit on a cross, of course, that there was a potential of over 700 firearms." Counsel's word for that method: "this is not science." It is "Eyeballing," the defense said. The defense also pointed to a proficiency test the examiner once failed and a microscope part FDLE had to replace to fix the zoom.

The Facebook gun photo, the defense argued, "means absolutely nothing." Counsel reminded jurors that in 2020, "because of COVID," there were shortages of water, toilet paper and ammunition, and that people bought, sold and traded guns. Fingerprints on the gun in the safe got two words: "super glue science."

"Mistake After Mistake"

The longest stretch of the defense closing was a list, and the list was the point. The two trucks from the scene towed to a warehouse roughly 47 minutes away, which the defense argued means someone had to reach in and put them in neutral, with nothing documented about who. A photo of a yellow sheet over one truck with what counsel called bloody boot prints on it, and technicians not wearing booties. "This is not okay, folks," counsel said, twice. A warehouse photo, Exhibit 159, showing the trucks parked together, which the defense said left them open to contamination.

It went on: a purple cloth the defense said the State never explained, conflicting accounts of gunshot residue kits, a broken chain logged behind the right front seat in one report and the left in another, trajectories nobody measured, and a crime scene sketch the defense said runs Lake Streety Road the wrong direction.

Some of these are small, and the defense said so itself. "These are just little things," counsel conceded at one point, and then: "Those little things add up and they do make a difference." That is an honest way to argue it. One mislabeled bag proves nothing; the question is whether enough small failures, in a case where the State wants a man's life, make the big conclusions unsafe.

A little after three hours into the day's recording, the judge checked the clock. Lunch was overdue. He put it to the jurors, and court took a fifteen-minute break.

"You Don't Tell The Witness What To Say"

When court came back, before the jury returned, the judge thanked the people in the gallery for coming in and out of the courtroom quietly throughout the trial.

Defense counsel picked up where she had left off, on which way the trucks were facing at the scene. That is the State's job to sort out, she told jurors. "Not mine." She walked them through an aerial photo, then photos of technicians at the property, one without gloves, another with nothing covering her head.

Then the defendant's own police interviews. The defense told the jury there is nothing inconsistent between the two, and credited the lead detective's own testimony: "Detective Tan indicated, told you that they're very detailed." On the Dollar General video, the defense said the exchange with Damion was "a cordial conversation," no confrontation, no argument, and that the detective himself found "Nothing nefarious about the Dollar General video at all."

On the traffic-camera stills, counsel told jurors not to trust labels put on blurry images. This is Polk County, she said, and it is full of white and light-colored trucks. And if you are told to look for a red truck, you will see a red truck. That led to the defense's best frame of the afternoon. Counsel said she had asked the detective how crucial witnesses were interviewed "because you don't tell the witness what to say." Tell an examiner which casings came from where, tell an analyst what numbers to look for, tell a witness to look for the man "with the red bandana and the cowboy boots," and they will find what they were told to find. "It's called confirmation bias."

WATCH: DAY 9, PART 34 (LIVE 11:30 AM ET, TUE SEPT 29) Frostproof Massacre Victim's Father's Outburst Halts Tony Wiggins' Defense Closing | Pt 34

She was in the middle of the traffic video, arguing that the State's timeline "makes no sense," when a voice came from the gallery.

"I Was There"

On our recording of the day, the courtroom microphone caught it as one line: "I was there with my son die, sir." The judge's response came in the same second. "Take the jury out. Take the jury out." And then: "Close the door, please."

The fuller account of what was said comes from the court reporter's transcript, which the defense read into the record later, with the jury gone, so that nobody had to rely on memory. By that reading, the man in the gallery said: "I guess my damn son lied about it. I was there and my son died." The court ordered the jury out. And then he said: "I hate you. My son died in my arms. You let me up there to testify. My son told me he done it." When the State checked the same transcript, it said the defense had left out one short sentence right after the order to take the jury out: "I hate you, he did it." The defense's own account was that the last of it came as he reached the threshold of the courtroom door, with the jury almost out of the room.

That claim, that his son told him who did it, is the father's claim. It is not evidence in this trial. And the State told the court that no evidence of any such statement exists: "In this particular trial, there is no evidence whatsoever that Brandon Rollins, the deceased, as he was passing away, made any comments whatsoever that anyone understood as anything."

When court came back on the record, the jury was still out of the room. The court established who had spoken: Cyril Rollins, Brandon Rollins' father. Judge Harb spoke to the room before he ruled. "This is exactly what I was concerned about, and it happened," he said. He talked about years of practicing law and still not knowing how anyone finds closure in a case like this one. He told the gallery, "this is your courtroom," and not to lose it. Then he ruled.

"Mr. Cyril Rollins just lost his right to be in 9C during this trial."

He gave his reasons: everyone's safety, the jurors' time and patience and dedication to this case. "We can't take a chance on him, simply put," he said, because the father had shown, in the judge's words, that he was "not to be trusted." And then the sentence I think every person in that room needed to hear: "But we have a trial, we have a democracy, and the trial is dictated by due process, fairness to everyone involved. Otherwise, our democracy will fail."

WATCH THE CLIP: CYRIL ROLLINS BARRED, MISTRIAL MOTION Frostproof Massacre Victim's Father Cyril Rollins Barred From Court As Defense Moves For Mistrial

Now I have to say what I think about this, and carefully, because a real person at the center of it has lost more than most of us ever will.

Cyril Rollins was at that scene. Other witnesses in this trial put him there, at his son's side as Brandon was dying, and the State reminded the court of that. I cannot tell a father how to sit through hours of lawyers arguing over how his son died, and I am not going to try. Grief does not follow courtroom rules.

But this is a watchdog channel, and this is a watchdog moment, and I am not going to soften it. A victim's father inserted himself into this trial, in front of the jury, in the middle of the defense's closing argument, and put a claim in that room that no witness ever made and no lawyer ever got to test. The judge noted on the record that the father "didn't testify." Whatever he believes his son told him never went through the witness stand, never faced cross-examination, and, the State told the court, has no support in this record. He put it in the jurors' ears anyway, as they were walked out. In a trial where the State is asking for death, that is about as serious as a spectator can get.

And think about what he risked. Had the judge granted a mistrial, this jury would have been sent home and this case would have started over, six years after three families lost their sons, with a new jury and the witnesses called again. The rule the judge enforced that afternoon protects the man at the defense table, and it protects the verdict too, whatever it turns out to be, from being thrown out later. The judge was right to bar him. It is the father's grief, and it is still the father's conduct, and both are true at once.

A Claim No Witness Ever Made

The jurors were brought back in only long enough to be sent to lunch, told not to discuss anything with anyone, and told why they were leaving: "There are quite a few things I need to take up with attorneys outside of your presence." Everything in this section happened with the jury out of the room.

The defense had already moved for a mistrial, which is a request to end the trial and start over because something happened that a fair trial cannot survive. Counsel framed the question the whole afternoon would turn on: "My concern is obviously whether or not the jury heard what was said by Cyril Rollins." The defense made clear it was not withdrawing the motion, but that the answer depended on what these jurors actually heard.

The State's response came in two parts. First, it pointed the judge to a 1993 Florida Supreme Court case, Arbelaez v. State. There, the prosecutor explained, a murdered child's mother erupted at the defendant as she took the stand, and no mistrial was required because the trial court surveyed the jury, gave a curative instruction (telling jurors to disregard what they heard), and every juror said he or she could. The State conceded the case was "not a hundred percent on point." Second, and this is the sentence I keep coming back to, the State said this trial's record has nothing in it to support what the father claimed:

"In this particular trial, there is no evidence whatsoever that Brandon Rollins, the deceased, as he was passing away, made any comments whatsoever that anyone understood as anything."

The State suggested jurors could be told exactly that, on top of an instruction to disregard. The judge was candid about how hard this was. The lack of any evidence that Brandon made such a statement, he said, is part of what makes this complicated. So does the fact that "Rollins the father didn't testify." And the core problem: "we don't know what they heard." The defense summed it up in one question: "did this jury hear the statement that was made by Cyril Rollins."

The judge decided how he would answer it. "When the jury gets in here, we're gonna be talking to them individually, one at a time."

One more question belongs on the record here. The law has a doorway for a dying man's last words, called a dying declaration, one of the oldest exceptions to the hearsay rule that keeps secondhand statements out of a trial. If a victim truly named his killer as he died, in front of a witness, that is evidence a prosecutor fights to put before a jury. Nobody offered one in this trial, and the State told the judge there is no evidence Brandon said anything to anyone. The record does not say why the father believes what he believes, and I am not going to guess. What the record does say is this: the claim never came in through the front door, where it could have been tested, and it came in anyway, through the gallery, where it never can be.

Can A Juror Unring A Bell?

Before the first juror came in, the defense put a roughly 40-second livestream clip of the outburst and a transcript of it into the court file. Then, one at a time, alternates included, all fifteen jurors were brought into the courtroom alone and asked the same things. What did you see? What did you hear, "from A to Z"? Do you understand that what came from the gallery is not evidence? Did it create sympathy, or bias? Can you still give the State its day in court and the defendant his? And a line the judge repeated to every one of them: "what goes on in 9C stays in 9C."

The answers were all over the map, and that is the story of the afternoon. Under our standing rule, no sitting juror is named here, and none will be.

One juror heard "something about that he was there and his son," and said they tried not to pay attention to it. Another heard something like "that was my son," and that the father had been with his son as he was dying, and then the jury was moving and that was all. One described a man "highly agitated." One said a screen was in the way and all that juror heard was "an F word." Another said, "I really can't tell what he was saying." Another was "the first one out the door": "I heard a loud voice, but I didn't hear the words."

And then juror number three.

"I heard him say something along the lines of, he told me he did it."

That is a juror's memory of the father's claim, and again, it is only the father's claim: the State told the court there is no evidence Brandon said anything. The juror also said she heard "maybe some threatening things coming from the hallway." And she had worked out who he was without being told: "being that there was only one victim's dad there, I'm guessing it's Brandon's dad."

The judge asked her the question the law asks. "You know the concept of you cannot unring the bell once the bell rung, right?" "Right." He took her through whether she could treat it as not evidence, whether it created sympathy or bias, whether she could be fair to both sides. His last question: "You'll be able to put what you heard aside, correct?" She said: "Yes."

The defense moved to strike her for cause, meaning remove her from the jury because of what she heard. "I know she said that she could put that aside," counsel said, "I truly have doubts regarding that." The judge reserved ruling until the whole panel had been questioned.

WATCH: DAY 9, PART 35 (LIVE 1:30 PM ET, TUE SEPT 29) Frostproof Massacre Judge Questions All 15 Jurors One By One About The Father's Outburst | Pt 35

The questioning kept going, and two more answers matter as much as juror number three's.

One juror heard the father say he "was there when my son died," and then said this: "We already knew." Nothing new, in other words. The jury knew from the testimony, the juror explained, that the father was at the scene and there when his son died. Think about that. The reason a juror could shrug the outburst off as nothing new is the same reason it is dangerous: the jury already knew this man was at his dying son's side, so when he says his son told him something, it lands with the weight of someone who was there. That same juror said they felt bad that the father "felt the need to do that," but "I'll still just look at the evidence we were presented with."

Another juror, near the end, recalled the father saying something along the lines of "stop lying or you're lying," and then: "I believe he said something along the lines of something to indicate that his son told him who shot him." Later the juror said they gathered that the son "told him that the defendant was the one who shot him," while saying the exact words were hard to recall and that this was just what they took from it. Once again, that is a juror describing the father's claim, and the State told the court there is no evidence Brandon said any such thing. That juror, too, told the judge they understood it was not evidence and it would not affect their judgment.

Somewhere in that stretch, with a juror struggling over whether sympathy was allowed at all, Judge Harb said the most human thing anybody said in that room all day: "I'm not asking you to stop being a human being." The question, he told the juror, was only whether any sympathy would rise to the level of keeping that juror from being fair to both sides.

By the end, every juror had said the same thing in one form or another. They could set it aside.

"The Motion For Mistrial Is Denied"

After a ten-minute break, the judge summed up what he and all fifteen jurors had described: Cyril Rollins "was upset, he was vocal, he was loud," and distraught. The defense kept its motion, "based upon what occurred in front of this jury," pointing to its exhibits, the transcript and the clip showing what it called the father's "angry" demeanor. It singled out the jurors who said they heard the substance: juror number three, and one other juror who, as the defense summarized it, understood the father to be saying the defendant had shot his son.

The State said it was "not objecting" to the defense's summary of what the jurors said. Then it argued the questioning showed the jurors "heard little to nothing regarding the outburst." It pointed out that several of them "couldn't even see what was happening because the television screen that we're using as a monitor blocked their view." For the jurors who did connect the man to Brandon, the State said, "it wasn't anything new or novel." Its summary: "every juror said they could put it aside," and this was "an outburst from a person in the gallery that seemed to have no impact whatsoever on the jurors." It then conceded juror number three for cause.

The standard was read into the record from four Florida Supreme Court decisions, from 1978, 1992, 1996 and 2004: a mistrial should be granted only when it is absolutely necessary for the defendant to have a fair trial. And at seven hours, seventeen minutes and thirty-three seconds into our recording of the day, the ruling:

"The motion for mistrial is denied."

Two people were excused. Juror number three was excused for cause, the State having conceded. Then the State brought a second cause challenge, against an alternate, for a different reason: she had reported being approached by a neighbor, whom she said she stopped from talking about the case, and something on social media she described as careless. That challenge was granted. "So that leaves us with one," the court said. Fifteen became twelve jurors and one alternate.

Last, the judge asked whether anyone wanted him to repeat a curative instruction or read another one to the jury. The defense left it to the court. "Okay, I feel it's been satisfied," the judge said, and he left it there unless the lawyers wanted more.

WATCH: DAY 9, PART 36 (LIVE 3:30 PM ET, TUE SEPT 29) Frostproof Massacre Mistrial Denied As TJ Wiggins' Defense Asks Where The Original Letter Is | Pt 36

So was this fair? I want to answer that honestly, which means giving the court its due first.

Judge Harb did more than the case the State handed him required. He barred the father for the rest of the trial. He did not settle for a group instruction and a show of hands; he brought in every juror, alone, and let both sides ask questions. He removed the juror who heard the claim most clearly. This is the process working the way Florida's highest court has said it should work, and it was done carefully, on the record, in the open. A lot of courtrooms would have done less.

And still, here are the questions this channel exists to ask, every one of them anchored in what the record shows.

The whole cure rests on each juror's own prediction about his or her own mind. Every juror said yes. Maybe every one of them can. But nobody can actually check that answer. That is how the law is designed, and it is fair to ask whether it is enough when the words being set aside are a father saying his dying son named the defendant, in a trial where the State wants a death sentence.

The juror who most clearly recalled the claim is gone. But the defense pointed to a second juror who recalled something like it, and the record we captured shows only two people excused: juror number three, and an alternate excused for an unrelated reason. So a juror who told the court he or she understood the father to be saying the defendant shot his son is either one of the twelve who will deliberate, or is the lone alternate. Our record does not say which. Either way, that juror told the court they could set it aside, and the court accepted it.

And the one sentence the State itself offered as a cure, that there is no evidence in this trial that Brandon made any statement to anyone, is not a sentence I could find being said to the jurors in the questioning our record captured. The judge told every juror, over and over, that the outburst was not evidence. That is the general cure. The specific one, the one that answers what the father actually claimed, I did not hear. Our recording has gaps in this stretch, and it may be that it was said where we have no audio. If it was not, then the jurors who remain, including one who recalled something like the father's claim, were told to disregard it, and were never told, as a panel, that nothing in this trial supports it.

The defense's motion and every juror's answer are now in the record. If this case ends in a conviction, that record is exactly what a higher court would read. I am not predicting anything. I am telling you where the question lives.

"Where's The Original Letter?"

"Defense, you may resume your closing arguments." And after all of that, the defense went back to work.

Counsel went back to the firearms examiner first, stressing that the "over 700 different firearms" concession was, in her words, "not brought up by the state, but had to be brought up by the defense," and arguing that none of the guns on that list matched the Facebook photo. Then the McDonald's video, where she asked jurors to watch how the people in that truck were actually behaving. Then a car wash video showing Robert Wiggins cleaning the outside of the white truck. (He is the brother; he is not on trial for murder, and he pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact.) A witness had described red clay "everywhere," counsel said, and she told jurors to look for it: "You don't see that on this still frame."

Then the letter, and here the defense finally answered the State's opening directly. It is "A copy of a handwritten letter," counsel said, with "absolutely no testimony about who wrote this letter," found during a cell search. "Number one, where's the original letter?" "Two, where's the evidence that my client wrote that letter?" And what does it actually mean? "It's not signed by anyone," counsel said, "but they want you to believe that this letter was written and it talks about some tattoos that are on my client and therefore he had to have written the letter." People in jail write letters for other people in jail, she argued.

On the tattoos, the defense offered its reading. A man charged with a high-profile crime, in jail, surrounded by people who have heard what he is accused of, may simply decide: "you're branding me with it, I'm gonna wear it." "Stop snitching," counsel said, is hardly a rare tattoo in custody. And if the State's theory is that the defendant wrote to his brother, she asked, "then where does a stop snitching and a rat come into play?" Her conclusion: "And this is not a confession."

Then, a few minutes after the mistrial ruling, came a line that hit differently than it would have on any other afternoon. "The judge is going to instruct you," counsel told the jury, "that you can't use your sympathy, your emotion, your feelings for the victim's family, anyone."

And then the IKEA bookshelf. You build it late at night for your grandmother, you take a couple of shortcuts, and at the end it looks "close enough to the picture on the box," she said, "Even though I've got these three screws here in this bracket, that the instructions tell me are vital." Her point: "It's not your job to provide those three missing screws in that wooden bracket to make this case that was presented to you structurally sound." And: "You cannot convict TJ Wiggins of being close enough."

She reminded jurors that the defendant's choice not to testify is a constitutional right they may not hold against him, that he "doesn't even have to make a single sound." She said the crime scene technicians "should be ashamed." And she asked for "the only verdict that is just and legal, and that is one of not guilty."

Those are fair questions about weight: how much a copy with no signature and no author on the stand should count. The letter is in evidence. What it proves is the jury's call.

"Did That Disappear?"

The State gets the last word in a Florida closing. The prosecutor promised it would not be long; it ran about forty minutes, point by point through the defense's closing.

It opened on the same rule the judge started the day with, turned toward the defense: "A lawyer can put a proposition in a question, but the question is not proof." Separate the suggestion in a question from the answer the witness gave. Later: "It's not the question, it's the answer to the question."

Then a refrain. "Did Tony Wiggins Jr.'s DNA disappear from that cartridge casing found at the crime scene?" No. "Did the cartridge cases disappear in this case?" No. "Did Damion Tillman's blood disappear from that passenger side seatbelt of Brandi Strickland's white Chevy?" No. "Did his words on that page in that letter disappear?" No.

On the defense's central idea, the prosecutor was blunt. "You will not hear the word hesitation, I assure you, in that instruction." And: "Circumstantial evidence is not lesser evidence," not, the prosecutor said, "when all the circumstances point directly at the defendant, which it does in this case."

Then the answers. The car wash: the State replayed the footage and pointed jurors to "That red clay" on the ground and on the tail of the truck, and to a photo from underneath it, which it said proved the truck had been at Lake Streety. The seatbelt: the State said the defense conflated two exhibits, swabs of the buckle and what was visible while the belt was retracted, and the belt itself, where it said Michelle Miller found the indication of blood in the part "rolled up into the mechanism," a place someone cleaning the truck would not see. It said Miller processed Brandi Strickland's truck days later, in protective gear, and had never been at the Lake Streety scene. "There's no evidence of contamination of any sample in this case." Why did the private lab not test some casings? Because they had blood on them, and "Whose DNA are you going to find on a shell casing that has blood on it? One of the victims."

The numbers: the likelihood ratio for Damion Tillman's DNA on the seatbelt was, as the State recalled it, "700 billion," and for the defendant's DNA on the scene casing, "17 million." The examiner's one wrong identification, on a 2010 test case, "proves," the State said, that FDLE's system works, because verification caught it, and, it said, there was "no mistake ever made in an actual case." The 700 guns, it said, were about the projectiles: "We're not talking about the shell cases." The towing claim: anyone who has ever had a car towed "knows that that ain't true." The trucks, the State argued, were "parked driver's door to driver's door," with every sign of where the bullets went on the passenger sides, which it said puts the shooter between the two driver's doors.

And then, on why one of the trucks was facing the way it was, the State conceded the limit of what anyone can know. "The three people that could tell you, they're dead." "No one's gonna know," the State said, whether Damion turned his truck around to talk to the others.

On the defendant's interviews, which the defense had called consistent: "Well, I beg to differ." The State said he first put himself in a green truck and did not mention his girlfriend coming along, and added Mary Whittemore (she pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact and is not on trial for murder) and a white truck only after an investigator referred to her statement. And the question the State wanted jurors to take into the room: "If there was nothing nefarious going on or happening after that Dollar General video and that communication, why did he tell his brother to change his story?"

"You have the case. You have all the pieces." The State asked for guilty verdicts of first-degree murder for the deaths of Brandon Rollins, Keven Springfield and Damion Tillman. "Thank you all."

WATCH: DAY 9, PART 37 (LIVE 5:00 PM ET, TUE SEPT 29) Frostproof Massacre State Rebuttal Tells Jurors They Will Not Hear The Word Hesitation | Pt 37

Two things from the rebuttal are the arguments the jury will actually have to resolve.

The first is "hesitation." The defense told jurors any hesitation means not guilty. The State told them that word will not be in the instruction. The law on that point is whatever the judge's instruction says, and the jury hears it Tuesday morning.

The second is the seatbelt again. "700 billion" is a DNA number: it speaks to whose DNA is in the sample, not to whether the sample is blood, which is the defense's point. The State's answer on location explains how a stain could survive a cleaning. What the stain is, the jury will have to settle from the evidence it actually has.

And the line about the three dead men: the prosecutor was right, and it cuts in every direction. The only people who could tell this jury exactly what happened on Lake Streety Road are gone. That is why the State built its case out of things. It is also why a father's claim about what his dying son said, a claim the State itself told the court has no support in this record, was so dangerous to put in front of this jury.

What The Jury Will Be Told

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, it's almost 5 30," the judge said. He sent them home, to be back at 9:15 a.m. on Tuesday, September 29, for "instructions on the law and deliberation." How long they deliberate is their call, he told them: "As long as it takes." Then the reminder every juror hears every night: "the trial is not over, do not discuss any aspect of this case with anyone, nor allow anyone to say anything to you." They left their notebooks behind.

With the jury gone, the lawyers and the judge went back to the instructions. The defense asked for heat-of-passion and adequate-provocation language on the charges, which, in plain English, would let the jury consider whether a killing happened in a sudden rage the law treats as less culpable. The State objected that there is "no evidence in the record of this case to support" it, and that it would only confuse the jury. The defense pointed to the engine-and-truck dispute the State itself had put in front of the jury. The judge denied it, and his reason is worth knowing: "remember the law talks about a defense theory, not the state's theory." The defense's theory in this trial has been that Tony Wiggins did not do this. Jurors will still be instructed on the lesser offenses of second-degree murder and manslaughter.

Where Day 9 Left The Case

Step back and look at the day whole.

The State made its most complete argument of this trial: a letter it says is the defendant writing his brother's recantation, a clock built around minutes no camera covers, one gun behind eleven casings, and a seatbelt it says cannot be gotten around. The defense made its most complete argument too: two labs, one examiner and a warehouse of trucks under attack, a stain it says was never confirmed as blood, a letter with no original and no author on the stand, and three vital screws left in the box.

And between those two arguments, a grieving father stood up and put a claim in front of the jury that is not evidence. The State told the court there is no evidence Brandon said anything to anyone as he was dying. The court barred the father, questioned every juror, removed one, and denied a mistrial on the strength of what the jurors said about their own minds.

Here are the posture facts one more time, because the jury is about to go into a room with this case. Tony Wiggins is the only person on trial for these murders, and he is presumed innocent. His brother, Robert Wiggins, pleaded guilty under a plea agreement to being an accessory after the fact; he is not on trial for murder, and this jury never heard him testify. Mary Whittemore pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact and to perjury; she is not on trial for murder either. There is no verdict.

Here is what Tuesday has to answer, and what I will be watching for:

What exactly does the judge's reasonable-doubt instruction say, and does the word "hesitation" appear in it or not? Does the full panel ever hear, from the judge, that there is no evidence in this trial that Brandon Rollins said anything before he died? Does the jury send out questions, and if it does, are they about the seatbelt, the letter, the casings, or the clock? And does any of what came from the gallery on Day 9 surface anywhere in the process from here on?

A jury is supposed to decide this case on the evidence alone. On Day 9 every juror told the judge they still can. From Tuesday on, it belongs to them.

WATCH: DAY 9, NO BREAKS EDITION (PREMIERED 11:30 PM ET, SEPT 28) THE FROSTPROOF MASSACRE Day 9, No Breaks Edition: Closings, An Outburst, And A Mistrial Denied WATCH: DAY 9 TOP MOMENTS (PREMIERES 6:00 AM ET, TUE SEPT 29) THE FROSTPROOF MASSACRE - FL v. Tony Wiggins - Day 9 Top Moments: Closings and a Mistrial Motion

Follow every Part of this trial in order in the Frostproof Massacre Trial Analysis Podcast playlist, and come back Tuesday. We will be in the room for the instructions, and for as long as the deliberations take.