Very rarely do people elect to defend themselves in court in the United States. With a constitutional right to a lawyer during a trial–plus if you can’t afford one, one will be appointed to you, it’s a very specific strategic move to elect to represent yourself in court. To defend yourself on double murder charges is a decision many people would find hard to rationalize.
Such is the case with Ronnie O’Neal, a Florida man who decided to represent himself while on trial for double murder. O’Neal is currently facing the death sentence after he’s been accused of killing his girlfriend and their daughter back in 2018. A viral clip of his outrageous opening statement has been making the rounds on social media, catching the eye of frequent pop culture commenter 50 Cent.
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“The evidence is going to show,” says O’Neal loudly in the clip of his opening statement to a judge at a Tampa courthouse. “That law enforcement tampered with evidence to meet their such high burden of proof because originally, it wasn’t enough. So we had to tamper with evidence since it was such evident already but we still had to tamper with evidence.”
In response to his nonsensical statements, resharing the video to his feed, Fif joked, “Damn I woulda just look at the judge and said can we work something out.” He added, “LOL WTF he watched to much For Life on ABC.”
As for O’Neal’s case, he is accused of killing nearly his whole family back in 2018. He is alleged to have murdered both his girlfriend and their daughter, and attempting to murder his son. Barely surviving the attack, he is scheduled to testify. He was 8-years old at the time of the murders.
O’Neal is facing two counts of murder and one count of attempted murder.