Gainesville man sentenced to 75 years in prison after pleading to the fatal shooting of a woman and infant

Staff report

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Kivi Jacquis Ellis, 31, has been sentenced to 75 years in prison after entering a plea of nolo contendere to fatally shooting a woman and an infant and attempting to kill a third victim.

Original incident

At about 4:51 p.m. on December 4, 2020, Gainesville Police Department officers responded to a call about a shooting in the 2900 block of NE 17th Drive and found the shooter, Kivi Ellis, still in the road.

Witnesses reported seeing Ellis firing “numerous gunshots” at an adult female victim in the front yard of the residence they shared with three children, aged 5 years, 3 years, and 3 months old. The adult female victim was holding the infant in her arms at the time of the shooting. After being shot, she fell to the ground, and Ellis continued shooting her. During the shooting, the infant was fatally shot in the head.

Ellis reportedly picked up the infant and walked to the back yard, where he “discarded the child’s body near a dog kennel” before going back to the front yard, where he resumed firing at the adult female victim.

Ellis walked down the street and fired at a third victim, who was not injured. The officers arrived just as this was happening, and when Ellis dropped the gun, they took him into custody.

Lifesaving efforts were made at the scene, but both the adult female and the infant were pronounced deceased. The two older children were found hiding under a bed in the residence and were present during the incident.

Ellis reportedly made several spontaneous statements to officers, including saying he was sorry and that he had “killed them both.”

Pre-trial motions and notice of incompetence

As Ellis’s scheduled August 31 trial approached, his attorneys filed a motion requesting individual interviews with jurors to determine their views on the death penalty and another motion that would have prevented the prosecution from striking jurors who were opposed to the death penalty. Judge James Colaw denied both motions.

On August 28, the defense filed a “Notice of the Defendant’s Incompetence to Proceed,” arguing that Ellis’s mental health had deteriorated as they had tried to prepare him for the guilt phase of the trial. The attorneys said that Ellis became unable to answer questions about the incident or provide information about evidence. They wrote that when photographs of the victims were shown during a hearing, Ellis had appeared to want to leave the courtroom but had seemed to be unable to ask to leave: he “wished to absent himself of body and then absented himself of mind to preserve his fragile mind.” The attorneys wrote that Ellis would not speak with his attorneys and had not consented to various medical procedures such as a scan for an organic brain injury because he believed there was a conspiracy.

Defense attorneys wrote that Ellis was narrowly found incompetent to proceed in 2022, and they presented a recent evaluation finding that Ellis was incompetent to proceed; the doctor noted that Ellis had questionable capacity to disclose pertinent facts to his attorneys, questionable capacity to testify coherently, and unacceptable capacity to behave appropriately in the courtroom.

Plea agreement and sentence

On August 31, Ellis signed a petition to enter a plea, attesting that he was competent to enter the plea despite listing four mental health diagnoses.

He entered a plea of nolo contendere to two counts of second-degree murder (a lesser included offense) and one count of attempted first-degree murder without a firearm (a lesser included offense). According to the plea document, the maximum sentence for the charges is life in prison, with a minimum mandatory sentence of 25 years.

Judge James Colaw sentenced Ellis to 50 years in prison for one second-degree murder charge and a concurrent 30-year sentence for the second second-degree murder charge; Judge Colaw added a 25-year sentence for the attempted first-degree murder charge, which will be served after the 50-year sentence. Ellis has credit for 2,097 days served.

A note on the score sheet states that the sentence “amounts to a life sentence” and was agreed to by the victim’s family. Ellis is prohibited from any contact with the victim’s family or his own biological children until they are 18; he cannot have any unsupervised contact with minors.