Last Updated: 12:25 p.m.
Assistant Public Defender Courtney Davison delivered a 30-second closing argument this morning, near the end of 34-year-old Qwinntavus Kwame Jordan’s three-day trial on a charge of armed robbery at a Palm Coast Circle K more than two years ago.
“So you’ve all sat through the trial and seen all the evidence,” she told the jury. “We just ask that you remember the burden stays here.” Here, as in Flafgler County, because Jordan is accused of committing a similar armed robbery hours later in Georgia, where he was shot eight times. “He is to only be considered for the charge that he has here, the charge that we’ve been discussing for the last couple of days.”
Davison, who was defending Jordan with Assistant Public Defender Melissa MacNicol, was hoping the jury would convict Jordan on a “lesser-included” charge like simple robbery, since he never took out the gun during the robbery. Maybe he didn’t have one, though he implied he did, and he took it out hours later in Georgia.
The jury of four women and two men, all white (Jordan is Black), didn’t bite. After deliberating 70 minutes, it found Jordan guilty of armed robbery, an offense punishable by life in prison.
Jordan seemed unimpressed as the verdict was read, leaning back in his chair.
Jordan, a previously convicted felon, is also a prison-releasee reoffender (PRR), meaning that he committed the offense within three years of a previous sentence to prison. He is also being prosecuted as a habitual offender, which further aggravates his sentence.
Assistant State Attorney Melissa Clark, who prosecuted the case, was seeking life.
“With PRR designation there’s only one sentence the court can enter in this case,” Circuit Judge Dawn Nichols said after a pair of verdicts. She sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Clark did not have to prove that Jordan pulled out a gun at the Circle K, only that he carried it. “And how do we know that he carried that gun? Because of what happened in Georgia,” Clark told the jury. That’s what the more severe charge hinged on.
Around 3 a.m. the morning of April 28, 2023, Jordan entered the Circle K convenience store on State Road 100 in Palm Coast and in a conversational tone indistinguishable from asking for a pack of cigarettes or a candy bar, told Cyrus, the overnight stole clerk, to give him all the money in the cash register.
“Are you serious?” Cyrus asked him.
Jordan was. “I don’t want to hurt you. I’m being dead serious,” he said. He gestured toward the right-front pants pocket, implying he had a gun. “Don’t make me pull it out,” he said. The scene, audio included, was captured by the store’s surveillance video. Cyrus calmly complied. But he was scared.
“This was not just some you know, clerk that was just being a nice guy and handed over free stuff,” Clark told the jury.
At the 28-minute mark of its deliberations, and again at the 48-minute mark, the jury asked to watch that scene again, and went back in to deliberate, sugegsting that one or more juror was questioning whether Jordan was, in fact, armed.
The store clerk handed over the money, packs of cigars, Flaming Hot Cheetos, and turned on the gas for Jordan, who drove off in a Ford Focus, driving north to Georgia at speeds of up to 140 miles per hour. Jordan eluded St. Johns County Sheriff’s deputies, who by then had been alerted by the Flagler County Sheriff and its license plate readers’ data to be on the lookout for Jordan’s car. A pursuit ended in Nassau County, where the Sheriff’s Office refused to take part, though the Florida Highway Patrol did.
Georgia police lost sight of the vehicle, only to be notified of an armed robbery at a Friendly Express convenience store, where the clerk took out his own gun, chased after Jordan, and shot him eight times–a scene also captured on video and shown to the jury on Tuesday. It was all screams and muzzle flashes–and so loud that the video it could be heard in a courtroom one floor below.
Jordan claimed he was never in Georgia.
“He just completely fabricated some nonsense about being shot in Jacksonville two days before,” Clark said. Jordan claimed he was the victim of a conspiracy. “There was no conspiracy. This is a man who robbed the Circle K and then fled multiple counties into Georgia and then ended up doing another crime up there and got himself shot.”
All the proceeds from the Circle K robbery were recovered in Georgia, and Jordan admitted to being at the Circle K, where he was wearing the same clothing that he wore later that day in Georgia. He was wearing the same clothes in the Georgia footage that he wore at the Palm Coast Circle K, and drove the same car.
In June 2024 the court found Jordan incompetent to stand trial due to mental illness. He was committed to a state psychiatric facility for treatment. Ten months later, the court found him competent to proceed.
There was little drama during the three-day trial. But this morning Jordan claimed a juror saw him getting ushered out of a first-floor elevator in such a way that his leg cuffs or chains may have been visible, prejudicing the juror against him. Defendants have the right not to be seen in shackles or in prison or jail garb when they appear before a jury, to preserve their innocence until guilt is proven.
The court reviewed the surveillance footage and spoke with the juror in Jordan’s presence, concluding that she had only glimpsed him in his “jump suit.” She was dismissed and replaced with an alternate juror. Jordan himself had been troubled enough by the incident that he alleged something more nefarious was behind the sighting. He became so argumentative with Circuit Judge Dawn Nichols that the judge sent him out to cool off. He was back less than five minutes later. That all took place before the jury was seated for what proved to be the very brief closing arguments.
After the clerk read the verdict, Clark, in the jury’s presence, entered into the record evidence documenting Jordan’s previous convictions and prison record to establish his prison-reoffender status. He had been convicted of fleeing and eluding in Georgia on Sept. 9, 2020. He had also been sentenced to 10 years in prison on May 29, 2012, for burglary, and been found guilty of marijuana possession with intent to distribute.
The cumulative effect of the documentation was to find Jordan a prison-releasee reoffender and a habitual reoffender. The jury, after a much shorter deliberation–12 minutes–did so, strengthening the state’s case to seek life in prison.
Jordan still faces armed robbery and other charges in Georgia, where authorities were awaiting the outcome of the Flagler County trial to proceed.
The Flagler County Sheriff’s Dan LaVerne, now a corporal on road patrol, was the detective on the case.
