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Criminal defense attorney Rob Sanders had a dream year in 2008, keeping an Edgewater killer Russell Bradshaw from death row sentence and convincing another jury not to send Dollar General double-murderer Roy Lee McDuffie back to death. He was also named president of the Volusia Bar Association.
DAYTONA BEACH -- Robert Sanders had a dream year as a criminal defense attorney -- staving off an almost-certain death sentence for an Edgewater killer and later convincing a jury to put the Dollar General double-murderer in prison for life instead of his former place on death row.
Sanders was also named president of the Volusia County Bar Association. Fresh off saving Edgewater murderer Russell Charles Bradshaw from a possible death sentence in the throat-slash slaying of New Smyrna Beach resident Lisa Memro with a stellar closing argument to the jury, Sanders was on a roll in 2008. Just four days removed from the high profile capital murder trial, Sanders was handed the gavel at the Bill France Room at Daytona International Speedway in early July, where he was introduced as the new president of the Volusia County Bar Association.
Sanders, 39, married and living in Ormond Beach, has been practicing criminal law in DeLand for 10 years after a couple of years with the Public Defender's Office.
Bradshaw was Sanders' fifth capital murder client. Another of his notorious clients was Roy Lee McDuffie, convicted of murdering two employees at the Dollar General Store in Deltona. His death sentence was tossed out buy the Florida Supreme Court and after a new sentencing hearing in November, he received three life sentences in the 2002 killings of Deltona Dollar General store employees Janice Schneider, 39,and Dawniell Beauregard, 27.
Besides his criminal defense responsibilities and his new leadership position with the Volusia Bar after six years on the board, Sanders also is in his second year as president of the Volusia chapter of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys. Sanders, along with Gerard Keating, Dave Damore and Tom Mott, are among a select few criminal defense attorneys with the training and experience to represent defendants in capital murder cases where the death penalty is at play.
And more often than not, a victory is not guilt or innocence, but what sentence is delivered with a conviction. "Generally on death penalty cases, the goal is to get a life sentence," Sanders said.