Trial for Spaniard accused of triple murder opens in Florida

A third trial for a Spaniard accused of murdering three people during a home robbery in the 1990s opened in Florida on Monday.

Pablo Ibar, 46, has already spent 16 years on death row, only to see the conviction overturned and remanded to retrial.

“Pablo is thrilled to finally have his day in court,” his attorney Benjamin Waxman told AFP.

Ibar appeared in a courtroom in Fort Lauderdale, just north of Miami, where jury selection for the trial began. The process could take up to two weeks, and the trial is expected to last between three and six months.

Ibar was sentenced to death in 2000 for the 1994 murder of a nightclub owner and two women he had brought home with him during a robbery in Miramar, Florida.

But in 2016, Florida’s supreme court overturned the conviction and ordered a retrial, stating “numerous deficiencies and failures” of Ibar’s defense attorney.