Preston Brewer’s murder trial for the February 2023 shooting death of Garrett Hughes, who was 21, began this week with jury selection. Prosecutors agreed to drop all but the first-degree homicide charge against Brewer, 60, who was initially also charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and gun-related charges.
Opening arguments could begin on Thursday, Jan. 15 if prosecutors and defense attorneys can empanel a jury for the trial in Judge Mark Jones’s Key West courtroom.
Prosecutors were ready for the trial to begin on Oct. 6 as originally scheduled. They opposed a request for postponement that Brewer’s defense attorney, Jerome Ballarotto, filed on Sept. 22, citing the sudden death of Key West attorney Cara Higgins on Sept. 20.
“I am moving to postpone Mr. Brewer’s trial for a reasonable time based upon the recent death of my close personal and professional friend, more like a sister to me, of more than 25 years, Cara Higgins,” Ballarotto wrote in his motion. “I have been speaking to Ms. Higgins’ family virtually nonstop since being told she had passed. I had plans to remain in New Jersey and work with my co-counsel, Mark W. Catanzaro, on the Brewer case this week. Instead, I have flown down to Key West to assist the family with her untimely passing.”
Ballarotto wrote that Higgins was divorced with two young children and no family in Key West. He said she had no will, and that he was tasked with meeting with the funeral director, handling her law clients, arranging for a private autopsy and organizing her personal financial affairs.
“The grief has incapacitated me and I have not slept for more than a couple of hours each night since I received the news. … Because of her untimely death I have been unable to prepare for the Brewer trial. I believe I am suffering from emotional trauma such that I am now seeking professional help to get back on track.”
His motion also states that Higgins had been Brewer’s personal attorney since his arrest in February 2023.
“Ms. Higgins also tended to all his mail and banking functions,” Ballarotto wrote. “I am sure Mr. Brewer is completely lost by her passing. I have yet to speak with him but will be doing so as quickly as I can. Mr. Brewer was extremely close to Ms. Higgins and, I am sure, grieving in his own way.”
Brewer has remained in jail on Stock Island since his 2023 arrest despite Judge Jones offering him a $3 million bond that would have allowed him to remain on house arrest while awaiting trial.
Ballarotto had sought in December 2024 to have Jones dismiss Brewer’s murder charge, based on Florida’s Stand Your Ground self-defense law. Judge Jones denied the self-defense claim in February 2025, having determined that Brewer was the aggressor.
Ballarotto appealed Jones’ self-defense denial, and in May 2025, the Third District Court of Appeal refused to hear oral arguments pertaining to Brewer’s self-defense claim, meaning the case would proceed to trial.
In his order denying the self-defense claim, Jones summarized the situation that unfolded that night of Feb. 13, 2023 at Conch Town Liquor & Lounge on North Roosevelt Boulevard, which is now closed. At the time of the shooting, following the 2023 Super Bowl, Brewer’s family owned the building that housed the bar business and the parking lot where the shooting occurred, but did not own the tenant business.
The incident started when Brewer exited the bar and saw a drunk Hughes, who had been drinking in the bar moments earlier, in the parking lot, urinating against the wall of a neighboring building. Security video footage shows that Hughes was shirtless and wearing shorts and flip flops at the time of the shooting.
The judge acknowledged that Hughes, a Key West native who was 21 at the time of his death, should not have been urinating on the wall and that Brewer, the property owner, had the right to admonish Hughes “and use lawful measures to curtail his inappropriate conduct.”
“Things should have ended with the verbal exchange between the two men,” the judge’s order states. “Unfortunately, Mr. Brewer took it upon himself to drastically escalate the situation by physically confronting and cornering Mr. Hughes. Specifically, Mr. Brewer advanced across the parking lot while simultaneously lifting his shirt sufficiently to display and grasp his holstered and loaded handgun. When Mr. Brewer stopped about 10 feet from Garrett Hughes, Mr. Hughes found himself trapped between the wall and the parked vehicles on either side of him with a gun-packing, angry man blocking his only obvious means of escape.
“The court finds that stand your ground immunity was not enacted to protect someone like Lloyd Brewer under these circumstances, which he created,” the order states.
