Bryan Pata was months away from the NFL draft when he was shot dead in his own apartment parking lot in 2006. Twenty years later, the case still hasn't produced a verdict — and the reasons why have almost nothing to do with what happened that night, and everything to do with what's happened since.
Rashaun Jones, Pata's former Miami Hurricanes teammate, is set to face a retrial on November 9, 2026, after a March 2026 jury deadlocked and a judge declared a mistrial. In the months since, the case has produced a secret Instagram account, a Florida Bar misconduct complaint, and a fourth attempt by Jones's own defense to get the judge thrown off the case.
The Murder
Pata, a 6-foot-4, 272-pound defensive lineman considered a likely NFL draft pick, was shot in the head in the parking lot of his Kendall apartment complex on November 7, 2006, shortly after leaving football practice. He was 22. The case went unsolved for years before investigators zeroed in on Jones, his teammate, who wasn't arrested until August 2021 — nearly 15 years after the killing.
A Detective's Secret Account
The first trial's path to a retrial started with a discovery about the lead detective. The Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office confirmed an internal affairs investigation into detective Juan Segovia after he was allegedly linked — through an email, phone number, and IP address — to an anonymous Instagram account, @balanceof_justice, that posted prejudicial commentary during the trial, including the words "GUILTY" and "he's guilty as sin."
[It goes] directly to his bias ... and his credibility as the lead detective and the state's key witness.
Defense attorney Sara Alvarez
The Prosecutor Complaint
Segovia isn't the only official facing scrutiny. Michael Von Zamft, the original lead prosecutor on the case before being replaced in 2024, is now the subject of a Florida Bar Supreme Court complaint alleging "serious professional misconduct," including manipulating witness testimony and offering undisclosed benefits for cooperation. That complaint directly touches the case's jailhouse informant, George Jones (no relation to the defendant), whose testimony had been dropped from the case in 2025 before being reinstated after the mistrial — a reversal the defense says can't be separated from the misconduct allegations against the prosecutor who once managed him.
The Fight Over the Judge
Jones's defense team has now tried four times to get Judge Cristina Miranda removed from the case, most recently arguing he has a "well-founded, firmly rooted" fear he won't get a fair trial under her. Miranda has refused to step aside each time, and at one recent hearing reportedly called a defense move "ridiculous and absurd." She has also gagged attorneys on both sides from discussing the case publicly.
Where It Stands
Jones, now 40, has been in custody for more than five years. The retrial — already delayed from an original date, then from May, then from September — is currently set for November 9, 2026. Whether it actually starts that day depends on whether the recusal fight, the informant dispute, and the misconduct complaint against a since-departed prosecutor get resolved first. Twenty years after Pata's death, the case still hasn't reached the part where a jury decides what happened — only who gets to be in the room when they do.
