The man who admitted he fatally shot Nassau County Deputy Joshua Moyers in 2021 is asking a judge to move his sentencing trial outside Northeast Florida.

Patrick Rene McDowell says he can’t get a fair trial April 3 because of pervasive media coverage and comments that Sheriff Bill Leeper made after McDowell’s arrest.

A court motion filed by McDowell’s public defender cites “almost entirely negative publicity” about his client in the local media after the shooting Sept. 23, 2021.

The motion also takes issue with Leeper’s advice to residents after the shooting: stay indoors and “shoot and kill McDowell if they [saw] him.”

Deputies found McDowell in a restroom at a youth sports complex in Callahan. He complied with deputies’ commands to come out and “laid prone and unarmed on a sidewalk,” the motion states.

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Leeper, in a news conference, said: “So, we gave him that opportunity. He came out of the bathrooms. We had him get down on the ground and crawl. He crawled like a baby like the coward he is. … I wish he would have given us an opportunity to shoot him. But he didn’t. He crawled out like a coward.”

The shooting occurred after Moyers had pulled over a Chrysler minivan at 2:30 a.m. Sept. 23, 2021, on Sandy Ford Road, near railroad tracks and about 3 miles south of Callahan.

Leeper said the driver shot Moyers under his right eye, then again in his back before fleeing just before the railroad gate came down. A second deputy found the deputy on the ground, while the abandoned minivan — later determined to have been stolen — and a passenger were found in a wooded area nearby. The passenger cooperated with investigators, Leeper said.

The deputy’s body camera recorded the shooting, the Sheriff’s Office said. McDowell was identified as the gunman. He was a Jacksonville man who had been previously committed for psychiatric examination under the state’s Baker Act, the Sheriff’s Office said.

Hundreds of officers from Northeast Florida and Southeast Georgia searched for McDowell as Moyers lay hospitalized, before dying two days after the shooting.

The sheriff said that investigators received information that led them to the concession stand next to Callahan Intermediate School. SWAT surrounded the facility, and McDowell called out that he wanted to surrender before coming out, Leeper said. But when SWAT gave him some commands, he didn’t fully cooperate and a police K-9 was unleashed, attacking McDowell in an arm, Leeper said.

McDowell also was treated for a thigh and head wound that occurred when Jacksonville SWAT fired at him, Leeper said. 

McDowell was taken to a hospital, then booked into the Nassau County Jail to await trial. He pleaded guilty a year ago to shooting and killing Moyers. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

In the motion filed Monday, McDowell’s attorney says his client suffered “permanent injuries” in the K-9 attack, which occurred, he said, despite McDowell’s complying with deputies’ commands.

The motion refers to comments the sheriff made about McDowell during another news conference.

Gesturing as if he had a gun, the motion says, Leeper said: “He stuck his arm out and pulled that trigger and took a life. He was brave enough to do that; he should be brave enough to stick his arm out and take that needle of death and give up a life.”

The motion also says Nassau County residents have created and sold sweatshirts and T-shirts showing McDowell being attacked by the police dog, while there has been “constant pervasive media coverage” of all of McDowell’s court appearances.

A survey of potential jury members showed that media coverage has created a bias against McDowell, the motion says.

Lead image: The cruiser of Nassau County Deputy Josh Moyers is decorated with memorial flowers and messages after his fatal shooting in 2021. | News4Jax