Nelson Serrano emigrated from Ecuador to the US in nineteen sixty four, building a family a successful business, and in the late eighties joined forces with two partners, George Gonzalvez and Phil Dosso. Meanwhile, Phil's son Frank, had a side business trafficking drugs from Miami to New York. A nineteen ninety six drug bus left Frank a million dollars in debt to some dangerous characters, which coincided with an unapproved withdrawal from the business in that amount, causing a rift
between the partners. Then, on December third, nineteen ninety seven, in the wake of a second drug bust, four people were shot and killed at their factory in Bartow, Florida. Frank Dosso, his sister Diane, her husband George, as well as George Gonzalvez. Due to the ongoing rift, attention focused on Nelson Serrano, even though he was in Atlanta at
the time of the murders. Years of investigation turned up zero evidence against Nelson, so he retired to Ecuador in two thousand, but when pressure mounted in Florida, authorities indicted Nelson anyway, Floridian authorities circumvented Ecuador's requests for evidence and concerns over the death penalty, and instead arranged to have
Nelson kidnapped and illegally brought to the US. Prosecutors ignored evidence of a multiple shooter drug hit and instead presented false evidence and an impossible theory of Nelson's guilt that is disproven by video timestamps and the limits of reality. Ultimately, the jury was fooled and sentenced Nelson to death. His attorney as well as his son Francisco, join us now to share the current status of his case. This is Wrongful Conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction. I'm your host,
Jason Floman. Honestly, I don't even know if I'm ready for this episode. It's an international story and it involves a middle aged Ecuadorian man named Nelson Serrano, a guy who had no prior record of any kind. I don't even know if he ever had a parking ticket. This is a guy who was a very successful businessman who was illegally kidnapped from Ecuador by the State of Florida, and they did it in order so that they could prosecute him for a quadruple murder for which he had
an air tight alibi. But as we record this and Nelson Serrano is eighty three years old and still on death row in Florida. So without further ado, please allow me to introduce the son of Nelson Serrano, who is it's fiercest advocate and a son that I'm sure mister Serrano couldn't be more proud of. Francisco Serrano. I'm so sorry you're here today under these circumstances, but thank you so much for being here.
Thank you.
And joining him is Greg Eisenmenger, who as the attorney for mister Serrano and who is fighting tooth and nail to save this man's life while he still has some life left to live. So Greg, thank you for taking the time to be here with us today.
Well, thank you very much for including me so.
Nelson Serrano was born in Ecuador in nineteen thirty eight. He was educated at the University of Rosario in Argentina. I was a businessman in his home country before emigrated to the United States way back in nineteen sixty four and then becoming an American citizen in nineteen seventy one. Francisco, tell us about your dad.
Sure in nineteen sixty four. My father came here with a few dollars in his pocket and his wife to be my mother. They went to New York, got married, found a job as a draftsman. Little by little in this world of engineering, he made a name for himself over his designs. He got picked up by one of the biggest companies in material handling at the time, and little by little climbed the ladder in different companies till he formed his own in nineteen eighty four.
I mean this like one of those really beautiful immigrant success stories. And it was until this Saturday came to pass. Nelson started a company right, his own company, Garment Conveyor Systems. It was called it. He partnered with another company called Eerie Manufacturing Cooperative, which was started by Phil Dosso and
George Gonzalvez. And in the late nineteen eighties the three men decided to become business partners, equal shareholders in each company, and they moved both businesses from New York to Bartow, Florida. And after the relocation you started working there as well, Francisco, and things really started to take off.
Right.
He took their business from barely scratching up to a million dollars a year in sales to going past nine million within a few years. So everything was going great. But then things went downhill from there.
And things went downhill in a profoundly terrifying way, which brings us to Nelson's business partner's son, Frank Dosso, who had also come down from New York to join the family business, starting at forty five thousand a year with
the promise of moving up in the business. So it seems that instead of waiting for that to pan out, Frank got involved in drug trafficking with a Staten Island man named Bobby Venaria, in which he began an operation moving large amounts of cocaine from Miami to New York. And in December of ninety six, the DEEA busted one of these moves and Veneria held Frank responsible to the
tune of one million dollars. And then, coincidentally or not, in April nineteen ninety seven, well, tell us what happened, Francisco.
Yeah, I get back from one of my business trips and I have to do my due diligence every month, right, check the bank records, strike in style accounts, and then I noticed there's a million dollars missing from the jumbo money market. So of course they immediately go to the bank and go, hey, what happened here, and they say, well, George pulled that money out. Went to George and failed and said why did you do that? And they just looked at me and they said, we don't have to
tell you anything. We're two shareholders and we can do anything we want. So of course I call my father up. He's on a busines the strip, and I tell him what goes on. He calls them, they tell him the same thing. My father comes back early from his business trip, confronts them with the corporate attorney and the corporate accountant. Basically says to them, you guys got to return that money. You can't do this. This is embezzlement, this is fraud.
And they said no, it's two against one. So they said, all right, well then I got assue you. And it didn't make any sense. We're doing incredible, our reputation in the industry is at its highest. It didn't make any sense until later with what this million dollars meant. Obviously, the police to save his son's life, but at the time there was just no reasoning behind.
It, so Nelson sued Dasso and Gunzalvez, who then demoted Nelson from president to general manager, removed his access to accounting and changed the locks on the building. So Nelson quit. Now this brings us to December third, nineteen ninety seven. Frank Dasso, George Gunzalvez, Diane Patisso, and George Patiso was shot and killed at the Eerie Manufacturing plant in Barto, Florida. Diane Patiso was Phil Dosso's daughter, but she was also
an assistant States attorney. Get that, and that evening she went to pick up her brother Frank and her husband George Patisso at the factory to go back home for a family birthday party. Talk about wrong place, wrong time, and it looks like she may have walked in on something terrible that was about to go down and got pulled tragically, got pulled into it. So Phil in the details.
Here, it appears the shooting started where Diane Patisso's body laid and then the three men found in the one office all killed with small caliber weapons, short range shots, execution style and was actually termed as an execution you know, a hired hit type of murders.
Family members began calling Frank Dosso did not get an answer, so Phil Dosso and his wife, Nicoletto, drove to the plant. Phil stayed in the car, sending his wife in the front door of the facility. When she went into the front door of the facility and immediately saw the body of her daughter, Diane, she started screaming. Phil left the car, called nine on one and ran into the building and he ran pass his daughter and into Frank's office. Nicoletta
moved her daughter's body, cradling her or holding her. Phil tracked bloody footprints into Frank's office and the other three people were found in Frank's office. Blood splatter evidence shows that George Batistia was actually shot at least one time and a different part of the facility before he was brought into Frank's office and executed.
When officers arrived that evening, they found fourteen shellcasings, eleven from a twenty two caliber weapon, one from a thirty two which was pulled from Diane, and two from a thirty caliber rifle in Frank's arm. Now, all of the victims had been shot in the head with twenty two
caliber bullets execution style, and the murder weapons were never located. Now, the crime scene provided no clear physical evidence to link anyone to the crime, let alone Nelson, although relatives of the victims immediately pointed fingers at Nelson because of all
the bad blood and the current litigation. Now, there were some shoe prints that didn't match the Dosos or the victims, but no fingerprints or biological evidence from anyone but the victims was present, which makes it sound an awful lot like a professional hit. As we go through the evidence from the crime scene, it strains the imagination to think that one single person could have carried out this awful crime. As the state eventually contended.
These four people, according to blood splatter evidence, were shot at three different locations in the facility. So you've got one guy running around shooting people in different locations, moving at least one wounded person from one location to another where the final execution took place, and killing the assistant state attorney I am in a completely different location. Now, at least two guns were clearly used in this, and
the evidence suggests that there was three. Well, one of them is a long rifle, two of them are handguns, and less. Serrano grew an extra arm. One person cannot manage three weapons and four people, So this is significant evidence that shows that there were two shooters involved. Then you start to talk about all the blood that this
would have created. When the deceased were discovered, some of the family members actually walked in the blood, and there were bloody footprints by them later matched up to their shoes. Yet no blood was ever found on anything belonging to Nelson Serrano.
Yeah, and we'll talk later about the prosecution's crazy theory that Nelson drove a Renzl car to and from airports to make flights in an unbelievably tight travel itinerary. Yet where's the blood evidence in the alleged rental car. His body and clothing would have been covered in blood if he shot four people, right, where did he manage to stop and rinse off all of this blood evidence? They
never answered that question. Well, come back to the state's impossible theory in a minute, But first let's talk about the eyewitnesses, because again this is another super strong indication
that Nelson's Serrano did not commit this crime. Now, eyewitnesses said there were several Latin or Asian men in their twenties and thirties at the scene, and a man named John Purvis, who worked across the street from the factory, said that when he left work that day, he noticed a beige luxury vehicle, perhaps a Cadillac part next to Erie's main entrance, and he saw a man on the side of the road lighting a cigarette.
When Purvis comes out of the driveway of where he works, his car is pointing right at Eerie Manufacturing, and that's where he sees this young guy who's well dressed. Right, he's got a blazer, he's got a sweater, ves and the whole thing, which is not common in rural Bartow so that stood out. And then he sees that this kid is trying to light a cigarette when it's windy. He's so close to him that he's able to see that he's got a Zippo type lighter and that it's silver,
and that he's lighting a cigarette. And he's able to tell you that he's got jet black hair.
Which doesn't sound like a description of Nelson, who is nearly sixty years old at that point and well known to smoke a pipe, not cigarettes. But despite the lack of evidence, Nelson and Francisco continued to be targeted and thoroughly investigated, even harassed. Officers searched Nelson's house, where several
guns were found. After all, Nelson did collect guns. However, none of Nelson's guns matched the murder weapons, and a paraffin test showed conclusively that Nelson had not fired a weapon.
Now let me not leave out the complicity of the media in this slow moving disaster, right because the media ran with the story of Nelson as the prime suspect, always displaying his picture when the story and referring to him as quote the Mexican which is like any old brown country will do, right, I mean, oh, and Francisco, if I'm understanding this correctly, They were targeting you at the time, as well as your dad, right.
Yeah. We realized that because I was suing the company basically George and Phil for breach of contract from my employment agreement, and my father was suing them for the money they took that, you know, they would want to look at us. So from day one we cooperated. When they asked to do a paraffin test on me, I didn't have a problem with it, you know, and I was looking to help. So my father came back early from his business trip just so he can come in
and see what he could help with. This is the way we were until they started targeting us and making our lives miserable. The searches in my father's home, the tapping of the phones and of our emails, and the way they went after all our friends. It was just crazy. I can't even believe that it really happened.
This episode is underwritten by AIG, a leading global insurance company. AIG is committed to corporate social responsibility and is making a positive difference in the lives of its employees and in the communities where we work and live. In light of the compelling need for pro bono legal assistance, and in recognition of AIG's commitment to criminal and social justice reform, the AIG pro Bono Program provides free legal services and
other support to underrepresented communities and individuals. Meanwhile, investigators received an eyewitness account that should have busted this case wide open and tied together all of the loose threads. And of course, I'm referring to the statements from Robert Fowler. In nineteen ninety eight, a man named Robert Fowler was in jail at unrelated charges and reached out to police with information about this crime looking for lateiency in his
own case. Now, normally, jail house informants are not to be bled unless what they're saying is corroborated by the physical evidence, and in this case it was like Frank Dosso. Robert Fowler worked for Bobby Vanaria, the Staten Island drug dealer. In nineteen ninety seven, the DEA busted Frank's trafficking operation for the second time. Bowler said that after this, Venaria was done with Frank Dosso and sent two hitmen, Anton and a guy named Binny Aspirins. You can't make those
names up. He sent these guys to Florida to kill Frank. Now, according to mister Fowler, the hitmen found Frank at erie. They had two lookouts. They confronted the group and demanded that Frank come with them. Diane Patisso was there and identified herself as an assistant state's attorney and told them to leave, and that's when the shooting started. Diane was killed, the men scattered, George was shot somewhere else in the factory, and then the three men were corralled into the office
where they were killed execution style. That's the statement from mister Fowler, and it makes sense. It's the first thing we've heard that actually makes sense. The work was done for them at this point. And it's not like Fowler is trying to help the Serranos. He doesn't even know the Serranos. He was just trying to help himself. And you don't just make up information. It matches the crime scene to a t and less law enforcement veue that information.
But they hadn't because if they had, investigators wouldn't have ignored Fowler's statement and instead let the case go cold. Now, eventually, in two thousand, your dad did what he had always planned to do, from my understanding, which was to retire to Ecuador after a life well lived. Right, and that's where this story of Nelson Serrano should have ended, peacefully, back at home in Ecuador.
It's important to note that Nelson has dual citizenship. He has natural citizenship of Ecuador and he was a naturalized citizen of the United States. He liquidated business interests and moved Ecuador to the place of this birth. This was later mischaracterized at trial as him fleeing to Ecuador to avoid prosecution, but there was no reason for him to believe that he was still a suspect in this crime when he moved back to Ecuador.
Right because they had no evidence against him. But back at Bartow, Florida, people were upset that no perpetrator had been found for this crime. After all, the local media had held up your father's picture and told the public for years that the quote Mexican, the Mexican did it. And so on May seventeenth, two thousand and one, Nelson Serrano was indicted on four counts of first degree murder and his extradition was requested from Ecuador.
So at that point Tommy Ray, who's the investigating agent in this case, and Assistant State Attorney Paul Wallace traveled to Ecuador and arguably they're going to Ecuador to seek Nelson Serrano's extradition. They discovered Ecuador under no circumstances would extradite mister Serrano if he was going to be facing the death penalty. Additionally, Ecuador requested information about the particulars of the evidence that would show Nelson Serrano was involved
in this before they would extradite him. At that point, Wallace and Ray pretty much broke off any attempt to extradite mister Serrano legally. Instead, according to Tommy Ray's own testimony, they came into contact with someone who was associated with the American Embassy and Ecuador, who had previously worked for the DEA, and he connected Tommy Ray to some Ecuadorian police officers that he had worked with while he was
with the DEA. Some money exchanged hands, mister Ray says that was for expenses only, But the upshot of that was that Nelson was snatched up off of the street, taken before a sham extradition hearing on the theory that he was not an Ecuadorian citizen, which was untrue. The sham proceeding took about fifteen minutes, and then they took him from that place, suck him in a dog kennel where he spent the night, and then he was taken at handcuffs, placed on a plane and flowing back to Florida.
The date of the kidnapping was August thirtieth, two thousand and two, and then the trial didn't happen until late two thousand and six, so he spent four years in
a county jail in Polk County. You won't even imagine the kind of torture that he went through two hundred and eighty six of those days he spent in solitary confinement, naked, with the air conditioning being blown full ice cold stadium lights on twenty four hours a day, wasn't allowed to sleep, eat, and his walls were covered in human excrement that entire time.
There just seems to be no bottom to this, you know, But then comes the trial. So Robert Fowler's statement was withheld by the prosecution until five days before trial in two thousand and six, at which time the statement was downplayed. Now it's important to remember that none of the witnesses called the trial actually witnessed the murder, and the state brought up the person seen lighting the cigarette outside the building that day of the murder, trying to suggest that it was Nelson.
John Purvis was the witness that saw him, and he gave them a sketch. First of all, Nelson Serrano did not smoke cigarettes. He smoked a pipe, which everyone knew. So the state actually mischaracterized his testimony from that he was lighting a cigarette and he clearly saw a cigarette, that it appeared that he was lighting a cigarette. The other thing that they did instead of submitting this composite
sketch to the jury in its original form. They reworked the PDF so that it changed the look of the composite sketch. We have both the original composite sketch and we have the reworked one. The original sketch, which appeared to be a much younger, thinner person, didn't look anything like Nelson. Serrano changed to a heavier type look, which is more consistent with the way Nelson looked at trial.
So that was highly disturbing. There's no way that whoever introduced that piece of evidence did not know that this had been altered.
They also outfitted this composite sketch with the kind of classes Nelson was known to wear. It's just unbelievable. I mean, and what about the firearms evidence from the scene.
I think the most significant thing. According to the autopsies, there were four people and there were a total of fourteen gun shot wounds. Now, the police claimed a trial that they only found twelve casings. That really isn't true because they ignored the fact that twelve casings were found at one point in time, and two other thirty caliber casings were found on a palette that had been moved but at the time of the murders, this palette would have been lined up with one of the hallways where
one of the deceased was shot. Autopsy showed that they were what they described as through and through wounds. The state attempted to say that one single projectile made these through and through wounds, which is sort of a torturous way to try and explain too many wounds and not enough casings. But not even the medical examiner who testified
was willing to adopt that. We did discover as we reviewed the evidence in this case that these two thirty caliber casings had been marked for identification but never entered into evidence by the state.
Now there's also this story with the chair in his office. Tell us about that.
They tried to bring in a footprint on a chair, saying it was consistent with Nelson Serrano. It was wrong shoe size for one thing. But basically, if you stop and think about what's going on, the state's theory is
there's a single shooter who is managing four people. But at some point, while these four people were inside the manufacturing facility, Serrano, unarmed, would have to go into his old office, stand on this chair, remove a ceiling tile and recover a gun that the prosecution claimed that he had secreted back when he was an employee there, before any dispute ever happened, and before he was cast out
of the company. Why he would have a gun hidden in the ceiling of his office at that point in time was never explained, but that was their theory because someone had seen him do something with that ceiling tile on a previous occasion, we don't know what, according to that witness. And on another occasion, he was seen with
a gun at the facility. That actually was explained because employees used to shoot target practice behind the facility in a makeshift shooting range, and several people participated in that, including the Dossos, so there wasn't anything unusual about the fact that someone might bring a gun to the facility for use of this makeshift shooting range.
And let's talk about Nelson's alibi here, because we know he was on a business trip from December second to the fourth, first in Washington, d C. Followed by Atlanta, five hundred miles away from the crime scene, which of course was in Bartow, Florida, And the prosecution came up with a fairytale story to try to shoehorn in how he could have well been in both places at the same time. Pretty much here was their theory of how
he committed these murders. So they knew and we know that Nelson was seen on camera in Atlanta on December third at his hotel at twelve nineteen pm, and then again less than ten hours later at ten seventeen pm,
wearing the exact same clothes in both instances. Now, the state's theory was that in those ten hours, Nelson made an unbelievable round trip journey from Atlanta to Bartow, in which he would have flown from Atlanta to Orlando, picked up a rental car around rush hour and we all know what that's like three forty nine pm, and left for the factory in Bartow, which is an eighty mile
drive and typically takes ninety minutes or even longer. So at the earliest he would have arrived around five to nineteen PM, but probably much later.
The time of the murders was after normal working hours of the business. In order to believe that Nelson flew down from Atlanta and committed these murders, you would have to believe that he did that on a leap of faith, with no knowledge that any of his targets would even be on the scene at the time that he would
have arrived. He would have had to believe that someone was willing to let him into a building that he had been denied access to on multiple occasions, and every employee had been told to keep him out of the building.
Right, So he went to a place where he was not welcome to which he had no keys, He somehow gained access without leaving any signs of a break in with all of his old coworkers there, he was given plenty of time and space to go to his old office which was now Frank Dosso's new office, to retrieve a gun from the ceiling tiles and begin a killing spree that involved three separate guns, starting with Diana in the hallway, then chasing the other three around, and somehow
he was able, while by himself, to corral three men into Frank's office, where he shot them all execution style. Sorry about this, but get the fuck out of here
with this story. Now it continues to get worse. And then, according to this Kakamemi theory, he would have had to find time and a place to clean himself up and get rid of his bloody clothing and then of course buy the matching clothing, right he would like to buy the same exact set of clothes, because we know he was wearing the same clothes on both ends of this.
Then drive an hour to Tampa, drop off the rental car while leaving no blood evidence, and fly back to Atlanta to be back in his hotel again on camera by ten seventeen PM.
The timeline that the state presented a trial was questionable at best. Everything had to click perfectly, there could not be any delays. Well, one of the things that they kept from the jury is that there actually was a delay in one of the flights that they claimed Nelson took, and instead of presenting the actual arrival time of that flight to the jury, they instead presented to the jury
evidence of when the flight was supposed to arrive. So this is really questionable activity on the part of the state.
And according to the closing argument, the plane landed at nine forty two, but we know that the flight actually landed at nine point fifty four PM either way, And don't forget the government claimed he was in row thirty. If you know how long it takes to get out of road thirty to the front of the airplane. Even if he was in first class in the front seat, this would have been possible. But either way, getting to the hotel twenty three minutes later rue a bit.
Well.
The busiest airport's in the world, right, It led at the airport and getting to the hotel twenty three minutes later at exactly ten seventeen pm in order to be seen on camera again wearing the same clothes that he was wearing in the morning, but miraculously with no blood on them. I don't care who the hell you are, no airline. I've ever flown deeplanes that efficiently. It's impossible. Okay. Now, there's also no evidence of Nelson at any of the
three airports, no video, no witnesses, no nothing. Now, this round trip journey has been attempted and failed on multiple occasions. It is simply not possible. If this were an Olympic event, near sixty year old Nelson would have won gold where everyone else failed to finish. And the state goes further down this monstrously ridiculous and sinister path, claiming Nelson flew under two different aliases, one Agassio and John white, and they needed something to hold this pile of horseshit together.
So they came up with two pieces of false evidence. One the coerce statement from his nephew, Albaro Panya Herrera, saying that Nelson had rented a car from him out of Orlando in order to commit the murders.
Out of Roperrera, which is a distant nephew of my father. His statement to the jury was that he had rented a car, a teal colored Nissan, at Orlando Airport for my father or a friend of my father's to use on December third. Once he finished with his testimony and through counter cross examination, he does admit that that wasn't his original story and that the reason he's saying what he's saying now is because the police badgered him so much.
These are his words, and they threatened him. They basically said to him, we're either going to convict you or we're going to convict Nelson Serrano for these murders. And so he testifies understand in front of the jury that he finally decided, I'll say whatever the police wants me
to say, and that's what I'm saying today. And so he admits to basically changing his testimony to match what the cops wanted this say in front of the jury, and then when they talk about one hundred thousand dollars reward, he doesn't deny taking that money, saying that you know what, anybody can use one hundred thousand dollars. And so we felt all right, his testimony was done.
Now for the second piece of false evidence, they claimed that they found exactly half of Nelson's right index fingerprint on one parking ticket from the Orlando Airport parking garage and the exact other half of the same fingerprint on another ticket.
The state calls up their own expert and in cross exam, they ask them, do you think these fingerprints are legit or do you think they were planted? He says, well, I don't have the science to tell you that they're planted, because I don't have the fingerprints those parking tickets, and those fingerprints have been destroyed when they use the chemicals to lift the prints. He never saw the real tickets or the real fingerprints. He only saw a picture of them. Then he goes on to say, I find these is
very suspicious and there for four reasons. One it's his right finger. So you're telling me that instead of using your left finger, which is when you go to grab a parking stuff you're driving, you reach out with your left hand and you pull that ticket out. Why is it his right hand? Second, there's no other fingerprints on it. Will you go to pull your ticket out? You use your thumb and press down and you.
Pull it out.
And then the teller when you get it to them, they've got to swipe it, so their fingerprints should be on it. Nothing. Third, is that exactly half of that fingerprint was on the other parking ticket from November twenty third, so we're talking two weeks prior. And he noted that if you took a solid fingerprint, cut it in half, each half was on each ticket. He goes, it's completely odd. And there's no other smudges or fingerprints on the other
ticket either. And then fourth, if you put a fingerprint, no matter how you try, you cannot make a straight edge on our fingerprint. And he actually put his finger on the water glass in front of him. He goes, it's just impossible. So for those four reasons, fingerprints are suspicious to me, and so we thought, oh well, the fingerprint evidence is done.
And so what did the defense do with all of this? I mean, did they do anything at all?
I'm ashamed to tell you guys this because it kicked myself left and right for allowing the defense attorneys to convince us not to present a defense. And you heard me, right. They came to me and they said, the testimony from Alvareau is done, the fingerprint evidence is done. There's nothing to believe here. Reasonable doubt at the minimum exists everywhere. They're not going to convict your father. And if we don't present evidence there was a law at a time
in Florida. We get to talk twice, give a closing argument and that Florida can do what they want to do, and then we get to finish last And at the end, I'm thinking, but what about the trip. Why can't we spend time on showing how impossible it is? So I go, why can't we do that? And he goes, because we want to have the end of it. And we took their advice because they were the experts. And so at
the end of the day, how did this happen? And it was because this county had gone through nine years year of two billboards with the pictures of the victims and one hundred thousand dollars reward plastered on it. Since ninety seven until two thousand and five, the papers were always listing my father with a picture as the prime suspect, calling him the Mexican and four of the jurors, and they interviewed them after the fact. They said, how did
you do that? Why did you give him guilty? He goes, well, I kept waiting for them to show me why he's innocent. You can't make this stuff up. We couldn't believe it. My poor mother she never recovered. She still tests the floor that she's stepping on to make sure it doesn't get pulled away every day. You go through all those phases, right, denial, anger, depression. How could you possibly convict somebody who the state didn't even prove was there? How do you say he's guilty?
You know, you pick up the pieces and then you're like, what do I do next? How do we recover all this? In the attorney they look at you and they go, no, no, don't worry, We're going to repeal this.
It's like, who are.
You talking to We're talking about years, not decades that this thing is going to continue going, which it has. It's been twenty years.
And I want to talk for a second about the death penalty in Florida. Nelson's sentenced to death on a nine to three vote, which again is ridiculous, it's not even unanimous. But Florida and the death penalty, a very important fact that I hope people will remember is that at last count, Florida had executed ninety nine people since the reinstatement of the death penalty. During that same period of time, thirty one people were found innocent on death
row and freed. Now that doesn't include, of course, the innocent people that Florida has executed, people like Jesse Taferro, and the other innocent people that we know are languishing on death row in Florida who haven't been free, like Pablo Ebar or James Daily, Chris Maharaj, who is the subject of a fantastic podcast right now on Audible called
Abuse of Power Season two. So it's not unreasonable to say that Florida is not even getting it right sixty percent of the time when it comes to sentencing people to death. Maybe we'll be generous and give the benefit of the doubt to the State of Florida and say, maybe they're getting it right seventy percent of the time. So I ask, if someone is in favor of the death penalty, are you okay with thirty percent of the
people being executed being innocent? And if not, then you cannot support the death penalty any longer because that is what's going on in Florida. And here we have today living proof of another innocent man languishing, experiencing torture day in and day out, being on death row, the notorious death row in the state of Florida, for a crime he didn't commit. And how is he holding up?
I can't give you any answer to that, chasing it at All I know is if he can survive being in a six foot by nine foot sale twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, not being able to go outside, constantly being harassed by these guards, going through all this medical negligence and torture, and he can still keep his mental integrity and still stay somewhat positive in all of this. You know, I can't express my admiration for what he's done to stay true. I mean,
he's a stubborn guy. He's always said to me, I'm never gonna let them win on this. I'm going to fight this till the end. I know the truth is going to come out. It's going to liberate me. It's gonna liberate my name. But the state of Florida isn't just hoping he dies. And I'll be very frank with this. They're making sure he dies. My father is an old man and he's been under medical care for the last twenty years under these contracted medical providers, which are nothing
but shysters. He has three different medicines for his heart condition. He has osteoporosis. He's completely deaf. He needs hearing aids. He's already lost his eyesight in one eye and now he's losing it in his one last good eye. They're not doing anything. Even though he was diagnosed in jail as being deaf. Now they've said he's not deaf anymore, and they're not giving him his hearing aides. He hasn't had teeth to chew on and they don't give him dentures.
He's saving the teeth that had fallen out, and every morning he pulls string out of his uniform and he ties his teeth together so he can chew and then at night before he goes asleep, he breaks the string, takes his teeth, puts it in his pocket so he doesn't swallow it at night so he can redo that. The next day he suffers from a siatic condition. They
don't give him pain killers for that. Then he's got three different heart medications, which twice in the last eighteen months they took away from him for six weeks at a time. He said his heart was going so crazy that he didn't know if he was going to wake up. He didn't know if the heart was going to explode. And this is how he lived for those six weeks until he gave him his medication back. You can't be taking heart medication for twenty years and then go cold
turkey for six weeks. So they're attempting to kill him and doing all these things, and then what do they do. They take him to the doctor. They make him sit in an office for six hours. They make him sign something that says he was attended by a doctor, and he never was. You know, the guards they're sitting there telling him, you're going to lose your eyesight, You're going to be completely blind and completely deaf, and you're never going to know who comes at you or who's doing
what to you. That's what we're gonna do to you. He's been diagnosed for a hit for placement. They won't give it to him, and it's excruciating. You can't walk, you can't lie down, you can't stand, you can't sit for too long. Right, So I talked to him. I go, he needs to get hit replaced. Well, we're not going to do that. That's way too much money. And I go, all right, well, then let me raise some money and let me do it. Oh no, no, no, you can't pay for that. And I go, you got to be kidding me.
He needs it.
He's already been diagnosed by your own doctor. And he goes, well, he's in jail. He's going to get killed sooner or later. So we're not going to spend the money. It's what they say to me, So they say to him. Lawsuits have been filed against the Department of Corrections in the state of Florida. They have lost twice not observing the American Disabilities Act, and even till to this day, they're still not observing it despite the court orders for them
to do so. And then, on top of all of that, you know, the miscarriage is justice, all the medical neglect, disgusting conditions in two decades of nothing but misery. And this is what's also been going on for my mother. You know, here's my mother since the conviction, completely insecure about the world around her, checking the ground beneath her
every time she walks. And now as we record this, I'm letting you all know that she passed away last Monday, February seventh, twenty twenty two, and she won't be around to see my father out. And my father wasn't able to leave the prison to be with her or to even come to the service.
Jesus, I'm so sorry. I mean, I don't know how much a person can take. It's like kind of a Greek tragedy or something. I mean, it's more than anybody should ever go through. It already was, and now there's this, and I'm so sorry for you and your family and your dad's at this point, I mean, what can I say except he's one of the strongest people that I've ever heard of. To endure this and then still persevere and still keep the positive attitude that he has is
inspiring to me. And I'm sure to just everyone who's ever come across him or his story. So now we look at post conviction, and so much of everything we've talked about has been brought up in post conviction appeals from the kidnapping and Ecuador to exculpatory evidence about the crime scene, prosecutorial misconduct, and inadequate defense at trial. But
all of the appeals have so far been denied. But in May of twenty seventeen, a four to three decision of the Florida Supreme Court vacated Nelson Serrano's death sentence as a result of the Hearst decision, which rendered Florida's death penalty process unconstitutional and declare that jurors must agree unanimously in their decision to recommend the death penalty. And remember, for Nelson, it was a nine to three decision back
in two thousand and six. So they sent this case back to the Circuit Court for resentencing, and they haven't actually done anything about it yet. Right here we are all the way in twenty twenty two. What can be done? What are the prospects? This has caused a real outcry, I mean huge organizations have weighed in on this. Right.
Yes, Ecuador has weighed in significantly, The International Commission and Human Rights has weighed in significantly. Where we are right now is that the Supreme Court ordered a retrial on the sentencing aspect of the case. What I'm doing cannot actually find Nelson Serrano innocent. The federal appeals could actually overturn the guilt or innocence portion of the case. So that's why it's very important to get the case to where Bruce Fletcher and Charles White will be handling the
federal appeals. However, at every status hearing, the State Attorney's office has continued to ask that the case to be pushed down the road and predict that it may be two years before they will be ready to try this case, and that delay has caused actual prejudice to mister Serrano. We talked a little bit about some of the evidence that we've lost, the deterioration of DNA, the deterioration of
the fingerprints. We've been robbed of the opportunity to bring in new experts who could really nail down the fact that that evidence is compelling for mister Serrano's innocence. We've lost witnesses, people have died since this case was even remanded on appeal, and certainly many people have died since the original trial. Despite that significant prejudice, we believe there still is plenty of compelling evidence to overturn the death
penalty in this particular case. Under the current State of Florida law has to be an unanimous decision, so we only have to convince one person on that twelve person jury that this was a miscarrier you justice, and that person can keep the State of Florida from illegally executing mister Serrano. If we can get the death penalty of return, there are a lot of options that open up to undo this injustice.
I mean, it sounds to me like the State of Florida is just stringing this damn thing out and hoping that he just passes away, you know, rather than have to address their filthy laundry here. I hate to say, but that's really I don't think that's a far fetch theory at all. And so Francisco, for our audience listening today, if there is horrified and disgusted by what's happened to your father as I am, and they want to do something to help, what would you like them to do?
Go to Nelson Serrano dot org. Subscribe to our email list. You'll see a link to change dot org. We just surpassed fifty four thousand supporters in this Be one of them, and then write your congressman tweaked Instagram A Governor DeSantis, Ashley Moody look at this case for Nelson Serrano. We cannot let Florida continue to do this to an innocent man. He should be free. Follow the Inter American Commission on
Human Rights. Liberate Nelson Serrano, immediately approve his custody transfer to Ecuador immediately, and push for the resentencing hearing that happen now, not in twenty twenty three, not at the end of twenty twenty two. That's what you can do. I want to bring to everybody's attention to February eighteenth. We're going to be in Miami at Florida International University on February eighteenth from five pm to seven pm. The cameras are going to be on Telemundo, Univision, CNN. We've
got a book that's come out of this. The government of Ecuador is going to be speaking there. We have four exoneries that are going to tell their story about what happened to them, and you will freak when you hear the similarities between what happened to my father. It's going to bring attention to the need of reform in our judicial system in the state of Florida, and we want you to be there. We actually be part of it. So be aware that this is going to happen February eighteenth.
You'll see it on social media over support us to get the word out.
Please tell your dad we're all thinking of him, and we all wish that we could open those doors right now, this minute and whisk him out of there. And the closing of our show is always, I think the most important part. It's called closing arguments, and it works like this. First of all, I'm going to thank each of you for being here, taking your time and sharing this incredible story.
And so now closing arguments works like this. I'm going to turn my microphone off, sit back in my chair, and close my eyes and just listen to anything else you guys want to share. Greg, let's start with you, and then you can just pass the mic to Francisco and he can close it out, and that's how we'll end the show.
Well, i'd like to start with justice delayed is justice denied. We believe absolutely that if we can get this case back before a jury, we can show that Nelson Serrano was wrongfully convicted and is not guilty of this crime. I would point out that it's very unusual for.
Defense attorney to take the tactic in a resentencing that his client is not guilty because he's already had another jury determine his guilt and now we're looking for mitigating factors.
As to why he should not be executed. Well, the major mitigating factor in mister Serrano's case is he's innocent. There are others, his age, his ill health, many many mitigating factors, and we will present all of those to the jury as well. But the message that we believe will be compelling is the fact that Nelson Serrano is an innocent man and Nelson Serrano has been nineteen years on death row wrongfully and this needs to change as
soon as possible. And I believe that the State of Florida is aware of the fact that if we get a resentencing hearing, that the likelihood is that the death
sentence will be overturned. That's why we've seen unprecedented attempts to delay this process by the state attorney in this particular case, and that's why we filed an appeal with the Florida Supreme Court saying these the ways are illegal, they violate due process, and we believe the death penalty should be taken off the table simply because of the delay. But even if you're not willing to give us that step, then order the state to go forward immediately. We are
ready to go to trial now. We want trial now, and we're hoping that we will get it as soon as possible.
Thank you, Greg and Jason. You know, I want to thank you for this opportunity to bring this story to light. It's so important that people understand that this is real, this is true. These things are happening, not just in Florida, all over the country. These tactics that the police and the prosecutors and the judges use to convict the innocent for the sake of convicting somebody for these heinous crimes is going on and it continues to go on. It's
serving their purpose and not society. You know, what it comes down to is action. One of the things that my father has always been saying, do what you can for me. We got to make sure this doesn't happen to anybody else. You think that's not going to happen to me. I don't get involved in those things. Well, you know my dad wasn't either. Everything would happen. There all comes down to this drug deal that we knew nothing about, and there he's been nineteen years on death row.
Wrong place, at the wrong time, you might think. But it's more than that, right, it's these prosecuted, these cops, these judges that look at this and say, well, we need to resolve this case, and this is the easiest path. This is the least amount of resistance that we're going
to get to put somebody up. Almost every state has a law that says that even if the prosecutor intentionally manipulates the system or evidence, or does anything to intentionally give somebody the death penalty when they knew that this guy was innocent, you can't civilly or criminally try them. Those are the laws that we need to reverse. So, if these are things you're committed to you want to do something about it, you can. It doesn't take a
lot of time either, or effort or money. You just need to be a part of it and find the organization you want, whether it's Floridinustry, alternative, a death penalty, it's the Innocence Project. Anything. Contribute five bucks, write some time, say hey, I want to help. How can I do that? You'll stop being part of the solution and believe me. We're getting there. The numbers are growing. We need more help to make this thing happen. Let's get Congress to
pass laws. Conviction integrity units are huge, huge amount of exonerations happen because of the conviction Integrity Unit. Make the mandatory and wherever you live, civil review boards over prosecutorial and misconduct that there are things that we can do. It's great to do something about my father. We want that to happen. He's eighty three. He deserves to finish his life in Ecuador. We want to make that happen. But let's make sure this doesn't happen to anybody else.
So join us, Join Wrongful Convictions, Join Innocence Project, Join all these other places that are doing things and help. And thank you. Thank you again for your time.
Thank you for listening to Conviction. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall, Justin Golden, Jeff Cliburn and Kevin Wartis, with research by Lyla Robinson. The music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good. On all three platforms, you can also follow me on
both TikTok and Instagram at it's Jason Flam. Wrongful Conviction is the production of Lava for Good podcast and association with Signal Company Number one