Judge denies last-ditch effort to keep Hialeah cop convicted of kidnapping from prison
The judge overseeing the trial of a former Hialeah police officer convicted of kidnapping issued a stern rejection Wednesday to a last-ditch effort by attorneys asking for a mistrial or that the conviction be dropped.
Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Andrea Wolfson denied motions from attorney Michael Pizzi to free client Rafael Otano. But before doing so, she read off a list of more than a half-dozen reasons for her decision. Tops among them were Otano’s own words. A witness at trial testified the officer said “We took him out there and left him. We have to get our stories straight.”
“He admitted to kidnapping the victim by the statement,” Judge Wolfson said.
Tuesday morning’s two-hour hearing at the Miami-Dade Criminal Courthouse came two weeks after a six-member jury found Otano, 28, guilty of kidnapping a well-known vagrant named Jose Ortega-Gutierrez. Handcuffed after the verdict and escorted to jail, Otano wasn’t present at Wednesday’s hearing. Otano was acquitted of a separate charge of battery.
Jurors were told by Miami-Dade Assistant State Attorney Shawn Abuhoff that Otano and another Hialeah officer named Lorenzo Orfila responded to a mid-December call from a bakery owner at a Hialeah strip mall who claimed the homeless man was harassing customers and staff.
Jurors also learned the two officers then drove the homeless man almost seven miles to a dump site outside the city limits, beat him unconscious and left him. Ortega-Gutierrez was eventually found wandering a nearby street by an off-duty Miami-Dade police officer, who called police and which led to the investigation.
Orfila has been charged with the same two crimes as Otano. His trial date has not yet been set. Both men were fired after they were charged with the crimes in January.
At the end of the emotional trial, Otano’s family voiced their anger at prosecutors. His grandmother hyperventilated at one point and his wife screamed in Spanish inside the courtroom.
On Tuesday, Pizzi repeated the failed argument — but this time before the judge — that Otano could not be charged with kidnapping because “he never abducted anybody, never told anyone to abduct anybody and never took anybody into custody.”
Afterward, defense attorney Stephen Lopez asked for a mistrial because under oath Ortega-Gutierrez was unable to not only put his client at the scene of the crime, but failed to identify Otano even as he was seated just a few feet away at the defense table. He also told the judge the defense was harmed because Miami-Dade Assistant State Attorney Shawn Abuhoff failed to turn over patrol car GPS evidence that alleged showed errors in the system.
But Judge Wolfson wasn’t having any of it. She called Pizzi’s claim that Otano couldn’t break the law while in uniform, “preposterous.” She said other reasons for her decision included the officers not driving Ortega-Gutierrez anywhere near the jail and the men acting in “concert” with each other and spending time during the alleged incident talking to each other on their private cellphones. Also GPS and cellphone technology placed them at the alleged crime scene.
“There’s been no reasonable evidence of innocence by the defense,” the judge said. Motion “denied for new trial.”
Pizzi said Otano will appeal the late September jury verdict.
