DUVAL COUNTY, Fla. \u2013 A judge will consider on Tuesday morning a recently filed motion to withdraw the guilty plea of the accused gunman in the 2022 Jared Bridegan murder-for-hire case.<\/p>\n
According to the motion filed on Friday, Henry Tenon, who\u2019s accused of killing Jared Bridegan in 2022, is asking the judge to let him take back his guilty plea before sentencing and proceed with a trial instead.<\/p>\n
READ | Henry Tenon\u2019s motion to withdraw plea<\/a><\/p>\n In January 2023, Tenon was charged with second-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, accessory after the fact, and child abuse. He then pled guilty only to second-degree murder with a weapon under a deal requiring him to testify against Bridegan\u2019s ex-wife, Shanna Gardner, and her estranged husband, Mario Fernandez, in exchange for dropped charges and a sentencing range starting at 15 years.<\/p>\n However, in January 2025, Tenon changed his tune, stating that his testimony against Gardner and Fernandez was false<\/a>, and he requested a new attorney.<\/p>\n Bridegan, a 33-year-old father of four, was killed in an ambush-style shooting in Jacksonville Beach in 2022.<\/p>\n Investigators say Fernandez wrote 3 checks to Tenon totaling $10K in the weeks after the murder. <\/p>\n In his initial interview with police in July 2022, Tenon told investigators that he had been renting a home from Fernandez in Jacksonville\u2019s Biltmore neighborhood for several years.<\/p>\n RELATED | Attorney for admitted gunman says he was shocked after client backtracked on testimony in a \u2018murder-for-hire\u2019 case<\/a><\/p>\n Relying on Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.170(f), Tenon\u2019s motion argues \u201cthe court may, in its discretion, and shall upon good cause, at any time before a sentence, permit a plea of guilty to be withdrawn.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Gardner and Fernandez \u2014 both under indictment for first-degree murder and other charges \u2014 are still on track to have their trial this summer, with jury selection set for Aug. 10.<\/p>\n In November 2025, prosecutors said they would no longer be seeking the death penalty<\/a> against Gardner and Fernandez accused in the murder-for-hire plot that investigators say killed Jared Bridegan<\/a>.<\/p>\n News4JAX reached out to the State Attorney\u2019s Office for comment on Tenon\u2019s motion, but said it \u201cwould defer comment to next week\u2019s court hearing on the matter.\u201d<\/p>\n Tenon is set to appear in Duval County court at 9 a.m.<\/p>\n Copyright 2026 by WJXT News4JAX – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DUVAL COUNTY, Fla. \u2013 A judge will consider on Tuesday morning a recently filed motion to withdraw the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":155406,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1039,30375,116,118,117,30372,30373,30374],"class_list":{"0":"post-158267","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-duval-county","9":"tag-henry-tenon","10":"tag-jacksonville","11":"tag-jacksonville-headlines","12":"tag-jacksonville-news","13":"tag-jared-bridegan","14":"tag-mario-fernandez","15":"tag-shanna-gardner"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}