In a sign that 85-year-old death row inmate Nelson Serrano wants to continue his fight to overturn his death sentence, his attorney submitted a motion for a new pair of eyeglasses and a hearing aid from the Department of Corrections.
Serrano did not appear in court, the hearing was attended by his attorney Greg Eisenmenger on Friday. The attorney asked the judge to order the Department of Corrections to purchase a hearing aid and reading glasses so Serrano could better participate in his defense.
Serrano was sentenced to death on June 26, 2007, nearly 16 years ago, for the murders of four people at Bartow’s Erie Manufacturing in 1997, according to Department of Corrections and previous Ledger reports. At the time, it was the worst mass shooting in Polk County. Serrano remains on death row at Union Correctional Institution, its website shows.
In 2006, a jury voted 9-3 to recommend that he be sentenced to death. He had been found guilty of four execution-style killings of George Gonzalves, 69, his former partner in Erie Manufacturing, and Frank Dosso, 35, Diane Dosso Patisso, 27, and George Patisso, 26 — the son, daughter and son-in-law of a second business partner, Phil Dosso.
Last year, Serrano fought unsuccessfully to have his death sentence overturned when his lawyers filed a claim that his right to a speedy trial was violated during a second penalty phase prompted by a Florida law change.
Like other death penalty defendants in Florida, he was to be resentenced after Florida changed its law to mandate the death sentence only be imposed in cases when a jury is unanimous.
A petition for writ of prohibition filed by Eisenmenger was denied by the Florida Supreme Court. The petition claimed he was not provided a “constitutional speedy trial, due process and statutory speedy trial ….” Because of this he asked for the lower court to drop the death penalty and issue a life sentence.
Florida changed its sentencing rules in 2017 when lawmakers passed legislation requiring a unanimous jury decision to sentence someone to death.
A mandate was issued on September 18, 2017, which vacated the Serrano’s death sentence and ordered a new penalty phase trial, the request for the petition said.
Hurricane Dorian and a prosecutor’s health issue pushed the court proceedings back to the following spring, the Ledger previously reported.
“Assistant State Attorney Paul Wallace, who was co-counsel for the state in Serrano’s 2006 trial and is lead counsel in the resentencing, said he sought to postpone the hearing after learning he would be missing several days of work to address a health matter,” The Ledger said.
According to Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, the defense made a good argument to invoke the speedy trial clause normally addressing the guilt and innocence portion of the trial even though the court disagreed.
“The question that he’s pushing is ‘do I have a right to a speedy resentencing hearing – speedy trial extended to a resentencing?’” Dieter said.
“I think he makes a decent argument that it’s like a trial,“ he said. “The death penalty cases are not just a judge pronouncing 10 years or 20 years; it’s a trial with lawyers and evidence and judgments.”
Some circumstances that led to delays in this case were unavoidable, such as hurricanes and the COVID pandemic, he added.