Jamarcus Simpson got concurrent prison time yesterday on three felonies. His co-defendant, the alleged shooter, still hasn’t faced a jury more than two years after the indictment.
VIERA, Fla. — Jamarcus Javion Simpson was sentenced to 20 years in state prison Monday afternoon for the Christmas Day 2022 killings of 14-year-old Jeremiah Brown and 16-year-old Travon Anthony Jr., closing one half of a double-homicide case that has dragged through the Brevard County Circuit Court for more than two years and left a Palm Bay community asking what justice looks like when two teenagers are dead and the man accused of pulling the trigger remains untried.
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Circuit Judge Steve Henderson imposed the sentence at 1:30 p.m. at the Moore Justice Center in Viera, according to the docket. Simpson, now 20, pleaded no contest in March 2024 to two counts of second-degree murder and one count of robbery with a firearm under a negotiated cap of 20 years. He received concurrent 20-year terms on all three counts with credit for 851 days already served in the Brevard County Jail.
The sentencing closed a docket that had been canceled, continued, and reset more than a dozen times since the plea was entered. Simpson’s original attorney, Christopher Beres, was relieved from representation in November 2024 after failing to appear by Microsoft Teams from Cambodia at a prior sentencing date. Conflict counsel Sean G. Anderson of Merritt Island took over the case and represented Simpson at sentencing.
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What happened on Christmas Day 2022
Jeremiah Brown, 14, and Travon Anthony Jr., 16, were shot multiple times and left in tall grass inside “The Compound,” a 2,321-acre stretch of undeveloped land in southwest Palm Bay that has been the site of at least five homicide investigations since 2022. Travon’s body was found that Christmas evening by a hog trapper. Jeremiah was found the following morning. His pockets had been emptied. The murder weapon has never been recovered.
According to arrest affidavits, Simpson drove his grandmother’s black Ford Fusion to pick up Travon, then Jeremiah, with co-defendant Juan Cortez Shuren Jr. in the passenger seat. The four drove out to the Compound. What happened next has been the subject of conflicting accounts. Simpson told Palm Bay detectives that Shuren shot the two teens. Shuren has accused Simpson. Travon’s blood was later identified on shoes recovered from Simpson.
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Both defendants were 17 and 16 at the time. Both were prosecuted as adults. They are cousins who share the same grandmother.
The plea, the cap, and the wait
Simpson originally faced two counts of first-degree premeditated murder with a firearm, both capital felonies, and one count of robbery with a firearm. A conviction on either murder count carried a mandatory minimum of 25 years to life.
On March 20, 2024, three days into jury selection, Simpson reversed course and entered a no-contest plea. The State Attorney’s Office reduced the murder charges to second-degree murder, a first-degree felony punishable by life. The plea agreement capped any prison sentence at 20 years at the judge’s discretion under Florida’s Youthful Offender statute. Beres told the court at the time that Simpson did not fire the shots and that the plea was the product of what he called prosecutorial vindictiveness after the State moved for a six-member jury panel.
Chrisel Brown, Jeremiah’s mother, attended the plea hearing. Outside court, she said the deal was not justice. She used the word joke.
What followed was 25 months of delay. Sentencing was scheduled and canceled in July 2024 and again in September 2024. The case was reassigned to Judge Kelly Jo McKibben in July 2025, then transferred back to Henderson in August 2025. In December 2024, the defense filed a motion to determine Simpson’s competency. Three confidential competency evaluations were conducted between February 2025 and November 2025. On April 23, 2026, four days before sentencing, Henderson signed an order finding Simpson competent to proceed.
What the sentence does and does not do
Simpson received 20 years in the custody of the Florida Department of Corrections on each of the three counts, all running concurrently. Effective date is April 27, 2026, with 851 days of jail credit applied. Before any gain time, he is scheduled to remain incarcerated until approximately late 2043. Florida inmates who plead to non-life felonies are eligible to earn up to 15 percent off their sentences for good behavior under section 944.275, Florida Statutes.
The court also imposed $6,230.60 in costs as a civil lien, including a $5,527.60 cost-of-investigation charge that is joint and several with co-defendant Shuren.
The other defendant
Juan Cortez Shuren Jr., now 19, remains charged with two counts of first-degree premeditated murder with a firearm. The original capital charges have not been reduced. He has not entered a plea agreement. He has not been to trial.
The Shuren docket shows 19 consecutive docket soundings continued by the defense between April 10, 2024 and February 26, 2026. The next docket sounding is scheduled for May 19, 2026 at 9:00 a.m. before Judge McKibben. Shuren is represented by Randol Tracy Masters of Melbourne.
The procedural contrast is striking. Simpson, the defendant whose own attorney told the court did not pull the trigger, has now been convicted and sentenced. Shuren, whom Simpson’s defense team identified as the alleged shooter and against whom a witness reportedly told investigators she overheard a confession, remains in pretrial detention with no trial date.
Community reaction
Reaction across Palm Bay Facebook pages was immediate and pointed. Posts circulating Monday evening invoked the hashtags #JusticeForJeremiah, #JusticeForTjay, #JusticeSystemFailed, and #BrokenSystem, with several commenters comparing the 20-year cap on a double homicide to Florida sentences imposed in unrelated drug cases. One widely shared post drew a contrast between the Compound sentence and a recent life sentence handed down to a repeat-offender drug dealer in Brevard County.
The frustration is not new. When Simpson took the plea in March 2024, Chrisel Brown said publicly that she was at a loss for words. Two years later, with the sentence finalized, that grief has metabolized into a community-wide question about whether the system can deliver proportional consequences when teenage defendants kill teenage victims.
The Compound, two and a half years later
The double homicide is the highest-profile case to come out of the Compound but it is not the only one. In the years since Travon and Jeremiah were killed, the area has produced the dismemberment murder of 44-year-old Nancy Howery, the shooting death of 30-year-old Nicholas Mitchell, and the suitcase-disposal homicide of 28-year-old Colie Lee Daniel. A separate active investigation involves remains found near Santo Domingo Avenue in February 2026.
Palm Bay City Council adopted a five-phase Compound Redevelopment Action Plan in April 2025. The city has secured roughly $1.6 million in federal brownfields and environmental assessment grants and applied for an additional $3 million state grant for utility infrastructure. The plan exists. The funding is partially in place. The crime scenes have continued.
What comes next
Simpson’s sentence is final unless he files a timely motion under Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.850 raising ineffective assistance of counsel or a similar collateral attack. Given the no-contest plea and the negotiated cap, direct appeal options are limited.
The Shuren case is the next major procedural milestone. With Simpson now sentenced and no longer facing the prospect of testifying for himself at trial, the State’s strategic posture in the Shuren case may shift. Whether Shuren takes a plea, proceeds to trial on the original first-degree charges, or extends the docket-sounding pattern further into 2026 will be visible at the May 19 hearing.
For the families of Jeremiah Brown and Travon Anthony Jr., the calendar that began on Christmas night 2022 has now produced one conviction and one open file. Three years and four months in.
