Judge set to free mom accused of stalking cop who shot her son. Police union objects

Gamaly Hollis spent nearly a year in jail for violating an order to stay away from a Miami-Dade police officer who shot her mentally ill, knife-wielding son six times, killing him in their small Kendall apartment – as she watched from a few feet away.

On Friday, a Miami judge agreed to free her, over the objections of prosecutors and a local police union. But Hollis’ legal troubles are far from over: she still faces charges of stalking and resisting arrest – charges that could lead to a maximum sentence of nearly two years imprisonment if she’s convicted.

And her pending release comes with conditions.

Hollis either has to come up with $1,000 in bond – which her defense attorney said she doesn’t have – or agree to house arrest. The latter also is far from a certainty, because after spending a little less than a year in jail, Hollis has lost her apartment and her job. She’s worried she’ll lose her car, too – in which she intended to live. She said it is about to be repossessed.

Read More: Grieving mom jailed, accused of stalking Miami-Dade cop who killed her mentally ill son

“She’s indigent. She has spent 364 days in jail with credit time served. She’s lost her house,” Assistant Public Defender Chandra Sim argued during Friday afternoon’s motion to modify Hollis’ bond.

Sim said that keeping her car is critical for Hollis’ ability to work – selling avocados and other produce seven days a week from 7 a.m. to to 8 p.m.

Hollis was in her small Peppermill Apartments home on June 15, 2022 when a neighbor called 911 to report an argument between her and her son, Richard Hollis, who suffered from severe mental illness and police body cameras showed was holding two knives when they broke down the apartment door. The call for help ended tragically, with Officer Jaime Pino shooting Richard Hollis six times, killing him.

The officer was cleared of any wrongdoing following investigations by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office – which are standard procedure in police-involved shooting deaths.

But in the immediate aftermath of the shooting Gamaly Hollis began a personal campaign to, as she has expressed it, inform her Kendall neighbors that a dangerous officer remained in their community. She sought him out at the Hammocks division police station, confronted him when he was working at a crime scene and posted pictures to her Facebook page that she acquired from his social media account.

Their face-to-face confrontation occurred on Aug. 22, 2022 at an unrelated crime scene. Police and prosecutors say Hollis rolled down her car window and shouted at Pino. “She started to yell in Spanish that I’m a killer, that I’m an assassin, that I killed her son,” Pino later testified. Hollis was ordered to leave, and did. But she returned to the scene, where another young man with mental illness was in handcuffs.

For that, she was arrested and charged with aggravated stalking, resisting arrest and trespassing. The stalking charge was reduced to a misdemeanor, and the trespass charge was dismissed.

Hollis’ attorneys with the Miami-Dade Public Defenders Office are asking for the remaining charges to be dismissed, arguing they violate her First Amendment rights to question a shooting she believes was unnecessary. They contend Hollis poses no real threat to Pino, or anyone else.

At Friday’s hearing before Miami-Dade County Court Judge Cristina Rivera Correa, prosecutors, however, argued they both Pino and the local Police Benevolent Association union have “grave concerns” about releasing Hollis, who has never expressed regret or remorse for her actions in calling attention to her son’s death.

Prosecutors initially said they were open to releasing Hollis on house arrest, but changed their stance upon learning that she is now homeless. Without an address, the prosecutors argued, she is ineligible.

While Hollis is out on bail – if she is able to post the $1,000 bond – her lawyers will continue to argue that Rivera Correa should dismiss the stalking and resisting arrest charges altogether. The judge heard arguments for and against a motion to dismiss on Thursday, and asked lawyers to submit written arguments by April 24. An additional hearing on that request is set for June 17.

“It is my understanding that there is a request that there not be a monetary bond imposed and it goes without saying that the state would object to that,” Assistant State Attorney Alec Kohn argued.

That dispute pivots, at least in part, on whether Rivera Correa agrees that Hollis has a protected, First Amendment right to speak freely to, or about, the officer who shot her son.

“This Court must not allow the State Attorney’s Office to weaponize Florida’s stalking statute in this case,” Sim, the assistant public defender, wrote in the motion to dismiss the charges. “Allowing prosecution of cases such as the one at hand makes a mockery of the goals enshrined in our Constitution, the Judicial System, and our laws.”

“The prosecution is arguing it is okay to prosecute Ms. Hollis because of Facebook posts. If that is not in bad faith, I’m not sure what is,” Sim said at an earlier hearing on Thursday.

The jail term Hollis just completed arose from one such Facebook post.

On April 8, 2023 Hollis posted a picture of Pino’s house, with his marked patrol car in front – after a judge had ordered her to cease all contact with Pino, including on social media. For that, Hollis was ordered to spend 364 days in confinement. One more day in her sentence would have delivered her to a Department of Corrections prison, as opposed to the Miami jail.