A White Paper
Current as of September 16, 2026. The trial is ongoing, and the defendant is presumed innocent unless and until the court finds otherwise.

I. Introduction

American criminal courts regularly see each of four unusual features: murder prosecutions without a recovered body, defendants who represent themselves, capital prosecutions, and felony trials decided by a judge instead of a jury. What they rarely see is all four in the same courtroom at the same time. The prosecution of Tomasz Kosowski in Pinellas County, Florida, presents that combination. This paper describes the case as the public record currently shows it, explains why each feature narrows the field of comparable cases, and identifies the questions legal scholars are likely to pursue once the trial and its mandatory appellate review are complete.

II. The Case in Brief

The case dates back to March 2023, when attorney Steven Cozzi disappeared midmorning while at work at the Blanchard Law firm in Largo. At the time, Kosowski was suing his former employer, a Dunedin-area cosmetic surgery practice, and Cozzi was an attorney representing the practice and some related clients in that litigation. Kosowski is an Ivy League-educated plastic surgeon.

The state’s theory relies on a dense circumstantial and forensic record. Prosecutors say surveillance video shows someone who appears to be Kosowski wheeling out a heavy wagon around 10:22 a.m. and struggling to pull it to a truck, which then returned to his Tarpon Springs home according to Flock cameras and neighbors’ surveillance cameras. When officers arrested him a few days later, they found $280,000 in cash, a ballistic vest with Cozzi’s blood on it, two passports, brass knuckles, a syringe, and a paralyzing agent in his Toyota Corolla. Investigators found large amounts of Cozzi’s blood in the law office bathroom and inside the truck, and Kosowski’s blood was also in the bathroom. Detectives believe Kosowski drove south to dispose of the body; by the time investigators located the landfill that received the contents of a Collier County dumpster, about a week had passed, and the body was never found. Premeditation evidence is also part of the state’s presentation: a witness testified that a week before the killing, Kosowski hid in an electrical closet at the law firm and left a wagon and a cardboard box inside.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. Kosowski has pleaded not guilty. He is representing himself before Circuit Judge Joseph Bulone.

III. Four Features That Narrow the Field

A. The No-Body Prosecution

Murder convictions without a recovered body are no longer novel in American law. Courts across the country have long accepted that the corpus delicti of homicide, meaning proof that a death occurred through criminal agency, may be established by circumstantial evidence. Such prosecutions nonetheless remain a small fraction of homicide cases, and prosecutors traditionally approach them with caution because the fact of death itself must be proven rather than presumed. In this case the state’s proof of death rests on the quantity of blood evidence, the victim’s abandoned phone, keys, and wallet, the transport footage, and the landfill search. Co-workers testified that Cozzi left those items at his desk and appeared to be in the middle of an email.

B. The Capital Charge in a No-Body Case

Seeking death in a no-body case is rarer still. Prosecutors often decline to pursue capital punishment where the manner of death cannot be forensically established, both because the absence of remains can generate lingering doubt in a factfinder and because certain aggravating circumstances depend on how a victim died. Florida’s “heinous, atrocious, or cruel” aggravator, for example, ordinarily turns on evidence of the victim’s suffering, which is difficult to prove without an autopsy. The “cold, calculated, and premeditated” aggravator, by contrast, turns on planning, and the state’s evidence of purchases and a prior reconnaissance visit appears directed toward that kind of finding. A detective testified that Kosowski used Amazon to buy two carts identical to the one on the surveillance video, along with five rolls of heavy-duty duct tape, months before the killing.

C. The Pro Se Capital Defendant

Self-representation in a capital case is permitted under Faretta v. California (1975), but it is uncommon, and the path to it here was irregular. Kosowski went through several defense attorneys over three and a half years, and according to court records he parted ways with his most recent attorney a few months before trial. Reporting indicates that his legal team quit after he accused them of fraud, forgery, and other issues, and that in the hearings that followed he said he did not want to represent himself during trial, and when asked whether he had spoken to any lawyers, he said no one was willing to come meet with him. By late summer his position had changed: at an August 21 hearing he formally represented himself.

The courtroom conduct so far reflects a narrow defense strategy. He has not questioned any of the 28 witnesses heard so far, but has pressed motions to suppress and objected to evidence being entered throughout the day, objections the judge overruled. He did prevail in having a media microphone removed from in front of him, saying he did not want his self-talk about the case to be heard.

D. The Double Jury Waiver

The feature that most sharply distinguishes the case is the waiver of a jury at both phases. Kosowski signed a waiver eliminating a jury for both the guilt phase and the possible penalty phase. One outlet reports that Florida requires separate waivers in capital cases for each phase, and describes this dual waiver as exceptionally rare. The colloquy itself was brief. Judge Bulone told Kosowski the court could only accept a waiver if he believed it was in his best interest, and Kosowski answered yes but, when asked why, questioned whether he had to answer, and the judge accepted that he did not. The same reporting indicates that Kosowski also waived his right to present mitigation evidence during the penalty phase.

The significance of this waiver has grown since 2023, when Florida amended its capital sentencing statute to permit a death recommendation by an 8–4 jury vote rather than a unanimous one. Whatever one thinks of that change, it left the jury as a collective check requiring agreement among many citizens. Kosowski has removed that check entirely. If convicted, the question of life or death will rest on one judge’s findings.

IV. Research Questions the Case Is Likely to Generate

A. The Boundary Between Waiver and Forfeiture of Counsel

The record suggests a defendant who, at one stage, said he did not want to represent himself and could not find counsel, and who later elected self-representation. Scholars studying the right to counsel will likely examine whether this sequence reflects a genuinely voluntary waiver or a de facto forfeiture produced by a breakdown in the attorney-client relationship. The distinction matters because the constitutional standards differ: waiver requires a knowing and intelligent choice, while forfeiture through misconduct follows a separate and less settled line of authority. The case also invites comparison with Indiana v. Edwards (2008), which allows states to insist on counsel for defendants who are competent to stand trial but not competent to conduct their own defense. A highly educated physician is not the typical subject of that inquiry, which makes the case useful for asking whether formal education should weigh in the court’s assessment, or whether the relevant capacity is something different.

B. Judicial Factfinding in a Wholly Circumstantial Capital Case

Bench trials generate written or oral findings that jury verdicts do not. If the court convicts, its reasoning about how circumstantial evidence proves both death and identity will be unusually visible to reviewing courts and researchers. Scholars of evidence may use such findings to study how professional factfinders weigh license plate reader data, transit camera footage, cell-site location, and purchase histories. Detectives testified that license plate readers and PSTA bus cameras helped them track the Toyota Tundra. The case thus sits at the intersection of two developing fields: the law of no-body homicide and the law of pervasive digital surveillance evidence, including the Fourth Amendment questions Kosowski has been raising. He previously argued that Largo police searched his car without a valid warrant.

C. Death Sentencing Without Mitigation

A capital sentence imposed after the defendant declines to present mitigation raises long-standing concerns about reliability. Florida responded to this problem in cases such as Koon v. Dugger (1993) and Muhammad v. State (2001), which require procedures ensuring that the sentencing court learns of available mitigation even when the defendant refuses to offer it, including the use of a comprehensive presentence investigation. A pro se defendant makes these safeguards more complicated, because there is no defense counsel to proffer what mitigation exists. Researchers will likely examine how the court gathers such information on its own and whether those procedures satisfy the Eighth Amendment’s demand for individualized sentencing. Reporting noted that jurors will not hear mitigating evidence or have the option to sentence him to life in prison, with the choice resting solely with the judge.

D. Appellate Review After the Retreat from Proportionality Review

Every Florida death sentence receives automatic review by the Florida Supreme Court. In Lawrence v. State (2020), however, that court abandoned comparative proportionality review, which had previously required it to compare each death sentence against others. The Kosowski case, if it ends in a death sentence, would test what the remaining appellate review actually examines when there has been no jury, no defense counsel at trial, and no presented mitigation. Scholars may treat the case as a limiting instance for measuring how much of the reliability in modern capital procedure depends on adversarial participation that a defendant is permitted to decline.

E. The Hurst Line and Its Waivability

Following Hurst v. Florida (2016), the jury’s role in finding the facts necessary for a death sentence became central to Florida’s capital scheme. The Florida Supreme Court later held in State v. Poole (2020) that only the finding of at least one aggravating circumstance must be made by a jury, and earlier decisions such as Mullens v. State (2017) recognized that the jury right in the penalty phase can be waived. The Kosowski case offers a clean example of a defendant surrendering that right entirely before trial, and it will likely be cited in discussions of whether the Sixth Amendment jury right in capital sentencing should be treated as fully waivable, or whether the state has its own interest in jury participation when a life is at stake.

F. Victimology and the Legal Profession

The victim was an opposing party’s attorney in civil litigation. Witnesses testified that Kosowski was often aggressive toward Cozzi and tried to have him removed from the civil case. Research on violence against lawyers, courthouse and law office security, and the escalation of civil disputes is likely to draw on this case. Related civil litigation has also followed: Cozzi’s family reached a settlement with the owner of the property where he was killed, which may interest scholars of premises liability for professional offices.

G. Public Access and the Self-Represented Defendant

The microphone ruling points to a small but real question. When a defendant acts as his own counsel, his muttered deliberations are functionally attorney work product, yet he remains visible and audible in open court. Scholars of courtroom media policy may use the case to consider how privileges designed for lawyers apply when defendant and advocate are the same person.

V. A Brief Biblical Reflection on Capital Proof

From a biblicist standpoint, the case also invites reflection on the standards of proof Scripture attaches to capital judgment. The law given through Moses required that a person be put to death only on the testimony of two or three witnesses and never on the word of one (Deuteronomy 17:6; Numbers 35:30), and it placed the hands of the witnesses first in carrying out the sentence (Deuteronomy 17:7), binding accusers to the consequences of their testimony. Scripture also assigned judgment to multiple elders at the gate rather than to a single ruler in ordinary cases (Deuteronomy 21:19; Ruth 4:1–2), and it recognized that bloodguilt required serious inquiry even when the killer was unknown (Deuteronomy 21:1–9). Modern circumstantial evidence, such as camera footage and forensic blood analysis, is not identical to eyewitness testimony, and the biblical standard cannot simply be transferred onto a twenty-first-century courtroom. Still, the biblical pattern of multiple witnesses and plural judges offers a useful lens for asking what is lost when a capital judgment rests on a single human decision-maker, however conscientious, and when the accused has declined the help of an advocate. Proverbs 18:17 notes that the first to plead his cause seems right until another comes and examines him; the reliability of any judgment depends in large part on that examination taking place.

VI. Conclusion

The Kosowski prosecution is not unprecedented in any single respect, but the convergence of its features makes it nearly unique. A no-body homicide places the burden of proving death itself on circumstantial evidence. A capital charge raises the stakes of that proof to the highest level. Self-representation removes the professional adversary who ordinarily tests the state’s case. The double jury waiver removes the community’s voice at both guilt and sentence. Each safeguard in American capital procedure assumes that at least some of these elements will be present, and this case asks what remains when most of them are absent by the defendant’s own choice. However the court rules, the trial record, the court’s findings, and the Florida Supreme Court’s eventual review will likely become a reference point for scholarship on the right to counsel, the waivability of jury rights, the reliability of death sentences without mitigation, and the evidentiary weight of pervasive surveillance in proving a killing that left no body behind.