fatally stabbing the mother of his child in 2019<\/a>, made the request during a hearing that was scheduled to address a possible plea agreement.<\/p>\nSpeaking through a Spanish interpreter, Castro-Arroyo accused the court of denying him the opportunity to defend himself and said he did not trust either his attorneys or the judge.<\/p>\n
“They have not given me the opportunity in this court to defend myself. I do not have an attorney to represent me, and it’s good that the cameras are here today to listen to this and for the people to hear this, so they know what you do in this court,” he said. “I don’t trust this attorney or you.”<\/p>\n
According to prosecutors, Castro-Arroyo is accused of stabbing the mother of his child 16 times inside her vehicle in northwest Miami-Dade in May 2019 while their 7-year-old daughter was in the back seat.<\/p>\n
Court records state that Castro-Arroyo allegedly called 911 about an hour later and admitted to the killing. Records also state two witnesses saw the attack from a nearby apartment building, and the child later identified her father as the person who killed her mother.<\/p>\n
Castro-Arroyo has not been tried or convicted in the murder case.<\/p>\n
Before his arrest in the homicide case, Castro-Arroyo had pleaded guilty to first-degree arson in 2015. He was sentenced to five years in prison followed by 10 years of probation and was released in December 2018.<\/p>\n
The murder allegations later led to a probation violation in the arson case. In 2019, a judge sentenced Castro-Arroyo to 60 years in prison for violating his probation.<\/p>\n
During Wednesday\u2019s hearing, prosecutors offered Castro-Arroyo a plea deal that would add 20 years for the murder charge to the sentence he is already serving. He rejected the offer.<\/p>\n
Castro-Arroyo will remain represented by his current attorneys. His murder trial is scheduled to begin Oct. 19.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Miami-Dade judge denied a murder defendant\u2019s request to represent himself Wednesday, ruling that while he is competent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":364121,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[123,125,124,373],"class_list":["post-364120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news","tag-miami-dade-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364120","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=364120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/364121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}