Judge to rule on motion to dismiss Alexander bros Miami Beach rape case this month
The judge overseeing a sex crime trial involving the Alexander Brothers and friend Ohad Fisherman said she’d rule on a motion to dismiss the case on June 30.
Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Lody Jean spent Friday’s hearing discussing the availability of some potential evidence for the trial scheduled for July 7. The judge made no mention of the defense team’s last-ditch move to end the case until she was asked about it by Miami-Dade Assistant State Attorney Natalie Snyder.
Attorneys for Miami Beach twins Oren and Alon Alexander and their friend Fisherman asked the judge to drop the case two weeks ago, arguing that “critical evidence” was lost, destroyed or never preserved by state prosecutors. They said the state had the opportunity to secure potential electronic evidence that is now under the control of federal prosecutors, during the December arrests.
And the defense teams argued if federal prosecutors are unwilling to turn the potential evidence over to the state — as Miami-Dade state prosecutors claim — then the charges should be dropped.
The 37-year-old twins and Fisherman are facing sexual battery charges from a New Year’s Eve 2016 incident at a Miami Beach apartment in which Fisherman is accused of pinning down a woman as Oren and Alon took turns raping her. They’ve all denied the charges. Oren is also charged with two other sexual assaults on Miami Beach.
Only Fisherman is expected to stand trial for the 2016 incident. That’s because the twins currently reside in a Brooklyn, New York detention center along with their older brother Tal Alexander, 38. The trio has been charged with a host of federal sex crimes that include rape and sex trafficking. And they’re not expected to be released anytime soon.
The 2016 case set for trial in three weeks is the only one involving Fisherman. He has not been accused of penetration during the alleged attack. He was released on bond and isn’t required to wear an ankle monitor.
The accuser told police she went to Alon’s apartment after he sent her pictures of people barbecuing and having fun on the patio of his Miami Beach apartment. When she got there, she said everyone was gone. She told police she was sitting on a foot rest at the end of the bed when Fisherman held her shoulders down from behind and the twins discussed who would rape her first. She said the twins disrobed her and used condoms despite being told “no” by her more than once.
State and federal prosecutors say the three brothers used their fame and wealth to lure women to their Miami Beach and New York apartments and on trips to other cities, even out of the country. The women, prosecutors say, were often drugged before they were raped. During a federal hearing in New York a witness told the judge more than four dozen women who prosecutors consider credible have also come forward.
Oren and Tal made their names as high-end real estate executives who had part in some of the largest residential sales contracts in the U.S. Alon has remained an executive with the family’s successful South Florida security business.
The twins and Tal were rounded up from their Miami Beach homes just after dawn on December 11 and taken into custody by local police and federal agents. Named in the original charging documents on Dec. 11 when the Alexander brothers were taken into custody, Fisherman turned himself in a week later after returning from his honeymoon in Japan.
More than two dozen additional women in New York and South Florida have filed civil lawsuits saying they were sexually assaulted by one or more of the brothers and asking for damages.
