Profit sentenced to life imprisonment in 2011 murder

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

Raymond Anthony Profit, 32, was sentenced today to life imprisonment for the March 29, 2011 murder of Jeremy Meldau. Profit was indicted in 2016, shortly before he was to be released from the Florida Department of Corrections after completing a sentence for other charges stemming from a home invasion robbery.

Profit’s trial began November 15 in the Alachua County Criminal Courthouse, prosecuted by Assistant State Attorney Brian Rogers and Assistant United States Attorney Christopher Elsey. Profit was convicted on all charges, including first degree murder and theft. Judge James Colaw presided over the trial.

The mandatory life sentence is running consecutive to Profit’s current 5-year sentence (with credit for 621 days served) for battery on a detainee on February 6, 2020. Profit was convicted on that charge in October 2021.

Profit has appealed both sentences.

Profit’s name appears in a public records request from Florida Department of Law Enforcement to Alachua County Supervisor of Elections Kim Barton, as a subject who may have voted while ineligible. Voting records show that he registered to vote on January 22, 2019, while he was in the Alachua County Jail, and he voted by mail in both the primary and general elections in 2020. Profit owes fines and fees from previous felony convictions and was thus presumably ineligible to vote in 2020.

Edited to correct the name of the victim