Hialeah cop convicted of kidnapping homeless man invoked “own justice,” prosecutor says
Proving a Hialeah cop kidnapped a homeless man from a strip mall, drove him far away to a remote area, beat him bloody and abandoned him, always seemed like a tall order for prosecutors.
But early Tuesday evening, on the sixth day of trial and six-and-a-half hours of deliberation, jurors said the state was half right. Hialeah Police Officer Rafael Otano was found guilty of armed kidnapping, but jurors said the state failed to prove he beat Jose Ortega-Gutierrez, a homeless man of almost two decades who was well known police and considered a nuisance to many of the shopkeepers in a Hialeah strip mall where he spent most of his days.
During the trial, the state failed to link any physical evidence at the crime scene to Otano. Prosecutors also couldn’t provide an eyewitness or surveillance video that placed Otano there. What they did have were cellphone and GPS records from Otano’s patrol vehicle that placed him close to the crime scene and city cameras showing Otano’s patrol car driving through red lights at intersections with its lights flashing. They also showed that prior to his arrest, Otano told a fellow officer believed to have taken part in the incident that “we need to get our story straight.”
The jury’s decision to convict the young, former Hialeah cop of a felony that could send him to prison for life left Otano’s family and friends in the courtroom distraught. The sight of Otano being handcuffed and taken away was so jarring that his mother Tarina Otano almost collapsed onto a wooden bench and then began yelling in Spanish at state prosecutor Shawn Abuhoff, “He’s innocent. My son is innocent.”
As family escorted Tarina Otano out of courtroom 4-1 at the Miami-Dade Criminal Courthouse, the former officer’s wife, Damaris Otano, also directed her anger toward Abuhoff. “You know that it didn’t happen that way,” she yelled, also in Spanish.
Outside the courtroom, Otano’s attorney Michael Pizzi vowed to appeal the verdict, calling the jury’s decision to acquit his client of battery but convict him of armed kidnapping, “outrageous.”
“The trial was about him beating someone up. And the jury found he never touched anyone,” Pizzi said. “He [Otano] never arrested the person, never touched anyone and never had him in his squad car.”
By then, assistant state attorney Abuhoff and co-counsel Carolina Sanchez, had left the courthouse without addressing the verdict with the media. Abuhoff, who is expected to try the same charges against Lorenzo Orfila, a fellow Hialeah officer charged with the same crimes as Otano for the same incident, said during his closing argument that the two officers went too far in their handling of Ortega-Gutierrez.
They argued that the technology along with cellphone trackers proved only Otano and Orfila could have been at the site. And they said that the two officers specifically targeted Ortega-Gutierrez solely because of who he is — an abrasive alcoholic with memory issues and nine felony convictions who was unlikely to file a complaint against the officers who beat him.
“On December 17 they made decisions to invoke their own justice. And that’s a problem. It’s criminal,” said Abuhoff. “When you take the oath to protect and serve, that means everybody.”
Pizzi had argued that the state’s case was flawed from the start because his client was a back-up officer on the scene who never came in contact with Ortega-Gutierrez and wasn’t required to write up a report. He reminded jurors of how Ortega-Gutierrez identified his attackers as a tall blond and two short stubby guys - nothing close to the slender, tall, dark-haired Otano. And, he said, there was no DNA evidence connecting Otano to the crime.
Pizzi said Ortega-Gutierrez’s nearly three days on the witness stand were filled so many inconsistencies — he even failed to identify himself on surveillance video numerous times — that jurors shouldn’t believe anything he had to say.
“He got stoned on vodka every day in December and every other day he got knocked out,” Pizzi said, addressing jurors. “But the state would have you make the assumption that police beat him?”
Otano, 28, and Orfila, 23, were charged in January with battery and armed kidnapping for the abduction of Ortega-Gutierrez. They were also fired from their jobs.
Prosecutors say the two men put Ortega-Gutierrez, who they both knew, in a patrol car and drove him about seven miles away to a remote area outside the city limits. They were called to a mall at West 19th Avenue and 60th Street by the owners of Los Tres Conejitos bakery, who said Ortega-Gutierrez had been harassing customers and made claims that one of the owners poisoned the food and stole tips.
At the end of a street near a wooded area that’s a popular illegal dumping site, prosecutors say Otano and Orfila beat Ortega-Gutierrez and left him there. When he regained consciousness after a few minutes an off-duty Miami-Dade police officer spotted the homeless man wandering down a street aimlessly and injured and called police.
Abuhoff told jurors that despite the alleged victims obvious flaws, not to lose sight of who’s on trial.
“This is street justice for no reason at all,” he said.
During three days of Ortega-Gutierrez’s mostly rambling and almost incoherent testimony, he was not only unable to identify Otano, but he failed to identify himself at least three times on video viewed by jurors. Pizzi blasted the state for not even trying to collect physical evidence from Otano and for not investigating the alleged crime scene.
“They never did an investigation. Instead, what they wanted to do was this, dump it in your lap,” Pizzi said.
Also charged in the alleged abduction is investigator Ali Amin Saleh, who the state contends offered Ortega-Gutierrez more than $1,300 to sign an affidavit clearing the officers of any wrongdoing. Earlier this month notary Juan Prietocofino agreed to a settlement in which he serves five years probation for allegedly signing off on Saleh’s fake affidavit.
Trial dates for Saleh and Orfila have not yet been set.
This story was originally published August 29, 2023 at 3:15 PM.
