An ex-Hialeah Police officer accused of abducting and beating a homeless man was found guilty Tuesday of armed kidnapping charges but was acquitted of battery charges.
Rafael Otano was fired after his arrest in the Dec. 17, 2022 incident. He was out on bond but was rearrested Tuesday after the jury delivered the verdict after seven hours of deliberations.
Otano's attorney said Tuesday night’s verdict didn’t make sense.
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“We think it's an outrage,” Michael Pizzi said. “The verdict is totally absurd, if as the jury found Mr. Otana never battered him, is not guilty of battery, not guilty of touching this person, he cannot be guilty of kidnapping."
Pizzi said they will file a notice of appeal. Otano's family did not want to speak afterward.
"We're headed to the appellate courts and this is round one in our fight for justice,” Pizzi said.
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Otano and his co-defendant Lorenzo Orfila, who’s not on trial yet, had responded to a shopping plaza after a business owner complained that the victim, Jose Ortega-Gutierrez, was allegedly disturbing the peace. Ortega-Gutierrez is homeless and is known to live at the plaza.
“There is zero evidence of an arrest. I’m not telling him they didn’t have a right to arrest him that day. What I am telling you at the point in time they realized who they were dealing with, they needed to invoke their own justice,” said assistant state attorney Shawn Abuhoff.
The man went from being a suspect to a victim after prosecutors say Otano and Orfila arrested Ortega-Gutierrez, drove him out of their assigned sector, and beat him in an illegal dump site outside Hialeah.
“He chose Jose Ortega Gutierrez. Because God forbid it ever came to this moment,” said Carolina Sanchez, Assistant State Attorney. “Who would people believe? The homeless convicted felon or two sworn officers of the law.”
Defense attorneys spent most of the trial discrediting the victim. They brought up his criminal convictions and alcoholism. Ortega-Gutierrez told jurors he was an alcoholic with a criminal past who was beaten by Hialeah police officers.
“He didn’t handcuff him, didn’t pat him down, he didn’t yell across the parking lot. He wasn’t even there when they arrested him,” argued Pizzi.
Otano denied all the allegations. His co-defendant Orfila was also charged with kidnapping, battery and attempted official misconduct.
Otano and Orfila's cellphone records and cop car GPS pings them near the shopping plaza where the arrest took place. It later allegedly shows both of them near the dump site where the victim claims he was beaten.
There is a second part to the victim’s arrest that state attorneys did not bring up during Otano’s trial. Days after the incident, Ortega-Gutierrez said he was approached by another man Ali Amin Saleh, who identified himself as a private investigator, and offered him $1,200 in cash to sign an affidavit that he had been arrested for drinking and hadn't been beaten by the officers, authorities said.
Saleh was charged with tampering. The notary, Juan Prietocofino, who signed that affidavit admitted his guilt on Aug. 7 for notary fraud. Prietocofino, who worked with Saleh, notarized the fake arrest affidavit about the alleged beating where the victim would follow a different story and say he had been arrested for drinking and hadn't been beaten by the officers.
Saleh and Orfila have court hearings in September.
