A burglar who faced the death penalty for killing a Palm Bay retiree in his home will instead serve life in prison without parole under a plea agreement supported by the victim’s children.

JUSTIN GIAMBANCO, 34, pled no-contest and was sentenced June 3 for the first-degree murder of Paul Black, 68, and related charges of armed burglary, false imprisonment and grand theft of a firearm from the 2023 robbery. In exchange, Assistant  State Attorney Samantha Barrett agreed not to seek the death penalty at trial.

As part of the same agreement, Giambanco also pled no-contest and was found guilty in five other open felony cases in Brevard County that included charges of burglary, aggravated assault, grand theft, written threats to kill, and possession of a firearm by a convicted  felon.

At the sentencing hearing in Viera, Black’s youngest child, Jennifer Ali, remembered her father as a supportive friend, engineer, musician, and Air Force veteran who “wanted to visit places he hadn’t been to and go to more of his grandchildren’s birthday parties.”

Ali said her family agreed to the plea agreement not out of pity or aversion to the death penalty, but to “end the tragedy” and avoid potentially years more in court with Giambanco.

“You took a lot from my family just by making one selfish decision — you had no right to take life,” Ali told Giambanco in her victim-impact statement. “You’ll have a long life ahead of you in a small prison cell, and I urge you to use that time to seek forgiveness, repent and build a close relationship with God.”

One of Black’s sons called Palm Bay Police to the victim’s house on NE Palm Drive on April 20, 2023. During a visit to check on his father, the son found Black lying in his bedroom doorway, bound and disfigured. A bloody kitchen knife lay nearby. Black died of multiple blunt-force wounds, punctures and cuts that included a large laceration to his neck, the medical examiner found.

Beneath Black’s body, Palm Bay investigators found an Apple iPhone SE, which they assumed belonged to the victim. Instead, a digital forensic examination of the phone and its contents revealed it belonged to Giambanco, who had just been arrested by Melbourne Police for another burglary.

Inside Giambanco’s Honda sedan, police found prescription bottles belonging to Black along with a handgun, camera, computer equipment, and passports stolen from the victim’s home. In the back seat, a crime scene investigator found a pair of sneakers with a zig-zag pattern on the soles and traces of blood on them. The soles matched a bloody footprint at the murder scene, and the blood later was a match to Black’s.

Giambanco had a long record of local arrests for theft, violence and drug possession. He was free from jail on bond from a past offense when he killed and robbed Black.

The State Attorney’s Office filed notice in June 2023 that it intended to seek the death penalty.