A.G. Gancarski
Zakee Furqan — briefly touted as a backer of former Jacksonville Mayor Alvin Brown before news of his criminal history, which included a second degree murder charge, came to light — will see his pretrial begin Tuesday morning on a perjury charge and multiple counts of felony vote fraud.
At issue: fallacious testimony from Furqan, saying he had registered to vote under his birth name, Leon Edward Nelson, when he in fact had registered under his current name.
Also at issue: a misstatement of his birthdate, which he had listed as 1/26/1975 on voter registration forms, when he was, in fact, born a year earlier.
Furqan’s pro se motions to have his murder conviction judgement vacated have been denied; currently, that has been appealed to the 1st District Court of Appeals.
Furqan faced a trial for voting fraud in February, which resulted in a hung jury.
He voted in 13 elections from 2004 to 2015.
Pretrial is set for June 14 on both the perjury and voting fraud cases with jury selection set for June 20 for the voting fraud retrial.
