He raped a girl before killing her and sister in Broward. He’s headed back to death row

A man convicted decades ago of raping an 11-year-old girl in front of her 7-year-old sister before strangling both girls and shoving their bodies in his attic should be executed, a Broward jury decided Thursday.

After a 9-3 vote, jurors opted to send Howard Steven Ault back to Florida’s death row for the third time. The 57-year-old was resentenced for the 1996 murders of DeAnn Emerald Mu’min, 11, and Alicia Sybilla Jones, 7, whom he lured into his Fort Lauderdale duplex with the promise of Halloween candy.

Ault’s fate depended on only eight jurors after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a law last April that allows juries to recommend a death sentence with an 8-4 vote instead of a unanimous vote. DeSantis pushed for the change in law after the Parkland school shooter, who killed 17 people in 2018, was spared from the death penalty in 2022.

Under current state law, a jury must unanimously find that prosecutors proved at least one aggravating factor beyond a reasonable doubt. They must also determine that those factors outweigh mitigating circumstances, which provide context related to the defendant that could be used to help advocate against the death penalty.

READ MORE: Convicted child killer faces death penalty once again in Broward. Is it the last time?

Ault’s resentencing came after the Florida Supreme Court in 2017 granted the death row inmate a new sentencing hearing after it found that Florida’s death penalty process was unconstitutional because it didn’t require that jurors make a unanimous decision.

Jurors in the original sentencing, which took place in 2000, opted to send Ault to the electric chair. But three years later, the Florida Supreme Court ordered a new sentencing over concerns about the jury selection process at Ault’s trial.

Life or death for ‘violent sexual predator’?

Starting his closing argument Wednesday, prosecutor Stephen Zaccor turned to the jury, listing a string of crimes linked to Ault. A sexual battery on a minor in 1994. Another in 1995. The 1996 rape and murder of DeAnn and killing of her sister Alicia.

Ault, Zaccor said, was identified by a defense expert as a “violent sexual predator,” a diagnosed pedophile who’s a danger to children. But Ault’s actions, Zaccor argued, went beyond that.

“What about pedophilia causes you to put your hands on the neck of a 11-year-old and squeeze until she’s no longer living?” Zaccor said. “And then do the same to her sister?”

Ault had a plan that ultimately led up to the double murder, Zaccor said. He hung around a park, befriended a struggling mother and gained her trust — and that of DeAnne and Alicia — to “feed on his desire for kids.”

He even confessed to the events leading up to the killings, telling a detective he lured them with the intention to rape 11-year-old DeAnn. But his plan, Zaccor said, shifted to not wanting to get caught since he was on community control. So he shoved their bodies in the attic and tossed their backpacks in a dumpster.

For Zaccor, handing Ault a life sentence would avoid “additional punishment.” It’s almost like letting him go free as he’s already serving life for the 1995 sexual assault.

“Don’t lose sight of this one thing,” Zaccor said. “There’s one person who could’ve prevented the death of DeAnn and Alicia. Only one. And he’s sitting at that table in a red jumpsuit.”

Pleading with jurors to spare Ault’s life, defense attorney Lien Lafargue displayed a photo of him as a baby. The evidence presented, she said, depicted a holistic view of the “mentally broken” man who murdered the two girls decades prior.

Lafargue recounted testimony that detailed Ault’s father being physically violent; his mother an alcoholic who looked the other way when he was being sexually abused. Ault, she said, was born with a brain damaged by fetal alcohol spectrum disorder and into a family that didn’t love or protect him.

Ault, she said, is an example of an abused child evolving into an abuser. But even though that doesn’t excuse or justify what he did, she urged jurors to take it into consideration.

“A death sentence is not going to bring these two little girls back,” Lafargue said. “It’s definitely not going to make this family’s pain any less.”

Ault showed remorse when he confessed to his crimes to detectives, Lafargue told the jury. He told investigators that he hid the girls’ bodies in his attic — and that he needed to be locked up where he couldn’t harm anyone.

“Every single reason that I’ve given you is a reason to give him life because he’s a damaged man,” Lafargue said. “Show the mercy he didn’t show those victims.”