Four Defendants Convicted in Plot to Assassinate Haitian President Jovenel Moïse

A federal jury in Miami convicted four defendants on May 8 2026 for their roles in the July 7 2021 assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced the verdicts in a press release. The four convicted defendants form part of a larger group of 11 individuals charged in the Southern District of Florida with conspiring to recruit, train and equip a commando team that entered Moïse’s private residence in Port-au-Prince and killed him. The bundle does not name the four defendants in the May 8 verdicts.

The convictions cover charges that include conspiracy to commit murder and material support to the plot. Prior to the trial the government had secured guilty pleas from several other participants and one additional conviction at trial. The four defendants convicted on May 8 now face sentencing hearings before a U.S. district judge in Miami; the bundle does not list specific sentencing dates.

The operational delta is straightforward: four additional participants in the assassination have moved from defendants to convicted felons under U.S. law. Sentencing will fix prison terms, restitution amounts if any, and supervised-release conditions.

Once sentenced the defendants lose the presumption of innocence and become subject to the full enforcement machinery of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons and Immigration and Customs Enforcement if they are not U.S. citizens.

Downstream the verdicts require the Justice Department to prepare presentence investigation reports and schedule hearings. The convictions also supply evidentiary foundations for any remaining trials or extradition proceedings involving co-conspirators still at large.

Haitian authorities have separately pursued their own prosecutions; the U.S. case supplies validated testimony and documents that Haitian courts can request through mutual legal assistance treaties. The Miami convictions further obligate the State Department to update its annual human-rights and narcotics-control reports with the case outcome.

This is the second set of trial convictions in the U.S. prosecution. The original indictment was unsealed in July 2021, months after the assassination. Congress has separately held hearings on U.S. counternarcotics assistance to Haiti and on the vetting of Colombian mercenaries who participated in the plot.

The May 8 verdicts close one chapter in a case that began with the recruitment of former Colombian soldiers in 2020 and 2021 and has produced arrests in at least four countries.