By Stephen Hudak
Orlando Sentinel
TAVARES, Fla. — Orlando identical twins Dante and Donte Hall, accused partners in a deadly robbery three years ago in Lake County, could both land on death row, a fate that would make them doubly unique.
The 25-year-old brothers, similar in name and criminal history, could be the nation’s first set of twins sentenced to death.
“I’ve heard of brothers [on death row], and I’ve heard of fathers and sons, but not twins. Never,” said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a Washington clearinghouse for capital cases. “That would be bizarre, I’d say, and most probably a first.”
Testimony began this week in Lake County in the state’s double-murder case against Dante Hall, whose twin was convicted in April of the same crimes. The brothers are accused of killing Anthony Bernard Blunt, 35, of Mount Dora and Kison “Little Mule” Evans, 32, of Tavares, during a robbery three years ago at a Eustis house party.
By an 8-4 vote in April, a jury recommended that Donte Hall get death for his role, which included planning the holdup with his stripper girlfriend, Angel Glenn, and wielding an AK-47 rifle that he used to shoot out the party lights.
Telltale tattoo
Circuit Judge T. Michael Johnson, who also is presiding over Dante’s trial, has not yet imposed a sentence on Donte but must give “great weight” to the jury’s advisory verdict when choosing between life in prison and death.
Dante Hall’s defense lawyers Michael Graves and John Spivey have argued that, if there is an evil twin, it’s not their client. They contend that he was not involved in the Eustis double homicide.
“It was Donte’s crew,” Spivey said during his opening remarks to the jury this week.
The Tavares lawyer acknowledged that Dante sold street drugs in Orlando but added that he did not have a reputation for violence like his brother, who had been charged with first-degree murder in an Orange County robbery and killing but was acquitted in 2007.
Orlando police are familiar with the Hall twins, police spokesman Sgt. Barbara Jones said.
She said Donte Hall has sometimes confused authorities by identifying himself as his brother, but he unwittingly provided investigators with a permanent distinguishing characteristic when he acquired a neck tattoo. It reads, “Money ain’t a thang.”
Donte Hall also sports a bottom row of gold-capped teeth -- Dante does not.
Party crashers
Misidentification has not been an issue in the Lake County case. The gunmen who burst into the house party Sept. 9, 2006, were wearing masks, but Glenn, 22, insists that both twins were present and armed.
She was in phone contact with them, telling them how many men were inside the house. She testified she recognized the brothers’ voices among the four masked party crashers, two of whom have been identified by police but not yet charged in the killings.
The robbers, dissatisfied with what they found, began shooting, Glenn said. When the gunfire stopped, two men were dead and two critically injured.
Defense lawyers have painted Glenn as a scheming liar who put the crime in motion.
Glenn, who brought along two girlfriends to perform at the party, expected to share the money, jewelry and other spoils of the robbery, according to previous trial testimony.
She testified she brought along a gun tucked in her thong when she and her scantily clad girlfriends sprinted from the party after bullets stopped flying.
Defense lawyers say she has delivered the twins to prosecutors in order to save herself. The single mother faces a possible 15 years in prison for conspiracy to commit armed robbery, but the state dropped all other charges, including counts of capital murder and perjury.
Surrounded by crime
The twins’ mother, Louise Laster of Orlando, has repeatedly declined to discuss her boys.
In a brief telephone interview on the eve of Dante’s trial, she said her sons “aren’t what the police are trying to make them out to be in Lake County.”
During the penalty phase of Donte’s trial, she testified that the boys struggled in Orange County schools with truancy and behavioral issues.
William Ledford Scott, who testified as a mitigation specialist in an effort to keep Donte Hall off death row, interviewed family members, examined school records and prepared a “psychosocial” history for Donte’s defense lawyers.
He told the judge that the twins were surrounded their whole lives by drug abuse, alcoholism and crime, that both parents had used and sold drugs, and their dad “spent more time in prison than out.”
“Drugs and crime were the norm in their life like mowing the lawn on Saturday or going to work or attending church would be for other families,” Scott said.
The amazing thing, he added, wasn’t that the twins could face death sentences, but that their kid sister had managed to escape what he called a multigenerational “swill pit” and made it to college.
Studious in court
The twins could pass for attentive accountants in court. Wearing stiff-collared dress shirts and ties, they have studiously jotted notes in separate trials. Donte occasionally popped Tic Tacs in his mouth as he watched testimony.
Historians at the state Department of Corrections could find no record of twins on Florida’s death row and just one previous set of brothers, Rodney Moe, and his brother Randall, department spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger said.
The Moes were sentenced to death for a murder in Miami-Dade County in 1982. Plessinger said they were later resentenced to life in prison -- and both died there.
Copyright 2009 Sentinel Communications Co.