A Miami handyman could be sentenced to death on Friday for killing a La Carreta waitress with a rice cooker power cord in 2005.
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Rafael Andres, 61, was convicted in 2014 and later sentenced to death—before he was granted a new sentencing trial—for the murder of Ivette Fariñas.
At the time, prosecutors stated that Andrés stabbed Fariñas, 31, multiple times in the chest, struck her in the face and head, and strangled her with the power cord of a rice cooker before leaving her apartment engulfed in flames.
When firefighters responded to the blaze at the home located at 1100 Southwest 74th Avenue, they discovered Fariñas’s body, which had also been burned.
Andres was a handyman who had been hired by Fariñas. Prosecutors said he stole her ATM card and fled the scene before being captured in March 2006.
Additionally, Andres was also previously convicted of another brutal murder in 1987, when he beat and stabbed Linda Azcárreta to death. He served a year and a half in prison for that case.
Andres’s Spencer hearing began in April, which is an opportunity for the defendant’s attorneys to try and convince a judge to go against a jury’s death recommendation and choose life in prison as a punishment instead.
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Death row again?
Andres, who was originally sentenced to death, was granted a new sentencing trial by the Florida Supreme Court after the U.S Supreme Court ruled the state’s law at the time was unconstitutional in 2016.
In November of 2025, a new Miami-Dade jury reviewed all of the evidence regarding the waitress’s murder and recommended in a 9-3 vote that Andres should be sentenced to die.
Jurors found the crime was heinous, atrocious, or cruel but did not believe it was committed in a cold, calculated, and premeditated manner.
Now, it will be up to Judge Zachary James to determine whether or not he should follow the jury’s recommendation.
In April, two convicted killers, one who was executed in April and another currently on death row, testified about how great a friend Andres was to them. One said Andres would break up fights in the courtyard, and another said he owed him his life after he intervened during an attack.
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