Former Miami-Dade Police Sgt. James Hurley Edwards died by apparent suicide in the Federal Detention Center-Miami Monday just days before he faced a minimum 15-year sentence for producing and possessing child sexual abuse videos, his attorney has confirmed to NBC6.
The attorney, Michael Catalano, said the Bureau of Prisons informed him on Monday that Edwards was found alone in the top bunk in his cell, dead of an apparent suicide by strangulation.
It is the second apparent suicide of an inmate held at the downtown Miami facility reported in three days.
Catalano said Edwards communicated with him electronically around 9 a.m. Monday — not revealing anything that would suggest suicide — and was found dead about three hours later.
Edwards, 58, was first arrested on state charges involving lewd and lascivious behavior with two brothers, ages 15 and 16, in 2014.
He worked out a plea deal with the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s office that allowed him to avoid being listed as a sexual offender and to keep his $9,000 a month pension, instead pleading guilty to two counts of child abuse.
He was sentenced to 364 days in the Miami-Dade County jail followed by 10 years’ probation, during which he was barred from communicating on certain social media sites, among other conditions, according to court records.
But in October, a man went to authorities after receiving a video through a gay hookup app from Edwards that he thought showed a minor engaged in sexual activity, according to a federal prosecutor.
An undercover FBI employee then adopted the complainant’s online identity and continued communicating with Edwards, who described having sex with underage boys, the prosecutor alleged.
Last December, he was arrested and held without bond by a state court judge on a violation of probation charge, alleging he was improperly using a computer and possessed a firearm.
The same day, the FBI searched his home and later obtained a federal indictment against him while he remained held without bond on the probation violation.
A magistrate judge in March ordered Edwards held without bond after the prosecutor argued Edwards “has demonstrated a history of abusing minors dating back to 2014. So this is not just a one-off situation. This is not a mistake.”
The FBI then searched electronic devices taken from him in 2014 and retained by the sheriff’s office, uncovering video Edwards secretly took of a minor taking a shower and masturbating, according to federal court records.
He pled guilty in September to two federal charges — production and possession of visual depictions involving the sexual exploitation of minors — and was to be sentenced Thursday to a minimum of 15 years and up to 30 years in prison.
Edwards’ is the second apparent suicide reported at FDC-Miami in three days.
Anthony Brillante, a 37-year-old former FIU student, was found unresponsive there Saturday afternoon, the Bureau of Prisons said. He was sentenced to nine years in prison for stalking and harassing relatives with tens of thousands of spoofed phone calls and texts threatening to kill them.
On the eve of that trial, he also paid $40,000 to have an undercover FBI agent posing as a hitman kill the federal prosecutor, FBI case agent, and the relatives he was targeting with the threats. He was convicted of those murder-for-hire and other charges in July and faced up to life in prison at what would have been his sentencing next month.
As for Edwards, Catalano said he did not know precisely under what conditions Edwards was being monitored, but said he has heard from clients and other lawyers that “ever since Trump started putting immigrants in FDC, it’s overloaded.”
NBC6 sent an email seeking comment to FDC-Miami, but has not yet heard back.
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