JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Lawyers for the defense in the case of a husband and wife accused of killing a St. Johns County father of four will get another chance to question the victim’s widow.
Jared Bridegan was murdered in February 2022 in Jacksonville Beach.
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His ex-wife, Shanna Gardner, and her estranged husband, Mario Fernandez Saldana, are accused of orchestrating Bridegan’s death in a murder-for-hire plot.
This will be the second time the defense gets to talk to Bridegan’s widow, Kirsten Bridegan.
This was the crux of the tug of war between the prosecution and the defense in court on Monday morning.
Prosecution: “Answer the question, she hasn’t talked to anybody about it.”
Defense: “May I clarify? Because I think my argument is perhaps misunderstood.”
Monday morning’s latest pretrial hearing was filled with much back and forth between the prosecution and the defense.
Gardner’s defense team asked the judge if they could, again, ask Bridegan’s widow Kirsten a short list of questions. According to the defense, they say there were at least four questions she didn’t answer fully, or not at all.
Prosecution: “She’s not saying she’s not going to answer it. She answers the question.”
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To that, the prosecution pushed back and pleaded with Judge London Kite that she not allow the defense to question Kirsten Bridegan again, saying they questioned her for hours on end and essentially, it’s the defense’s fault if they failed to ask all the questions they wanted her to answer.
In the end, Kite sided with the defense, granting them a very limited target deposition to ask Kirsten Bridegan those few questions the defense claims she didn’t directly answer.
Kite: “I do not want this to be a complete redo by the defense.”
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Defense: “Understood, your honor and we agree that’s not permissible under the rules.”
Kite: “All right, so the motion to compel is granted in part.”
Also during Monday’s hearing, Kite denied a motion to suppress evidence that the defense said was obtained unlawfully. Another pretrial hearing for Gardner was set for July 9 at 9:30 a.m.
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