At 83, Nelson Serrano is still incarcerated in a Florida jail, after being sentenced in 2007 to four death sentences for a multiple murder in the city of Bartow. However, relatives, lawyers, organizations and even the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights have said that he is innocent and that he was sentenced without evidence, so at least his trial should be repeated. Something that was repeated this Friday at a family press conference.
His son, Francisco Serrano, called local and international media to ask for more speed in his father’s case, and he did so together with lawyers, journalists such as Janet Hinostroza – who has followed the case for years – and former death row inmates who were exonerated. then several years for a crime they did not commit.
The main objective of the meeting, called “International Meeting for the defense of the life and freedom of Ecuadorian Nelson Serrano”, was to publicly ask the Governor of Florida, Republican Ron DeSantis, to urge the state justice to dispatch the resources resentment and the Court sets a date for the hearing, a process that has been delayed for several years.
With this his sentence would become life imprisonment, after which another resource would be introduced to repeat the trial.
The Ecuadorian State Attorney, Iñigo Salvador, participated in the press conference, held at Florida International University, in Miami, and although he mentioned that he could not speak on behalf of the country, there are things he can request for compliance with due process , including the lack of legality in the deportation that took Serrano from Ecuador to the United States.
Salvador also recalled that the IACHR sanctioned Ecuador for the case and that it recommended that the United States try Serrano again, since the North American country is not part of the Inter-American Human Rights System.
He also appealed that Serrano should have a new trial after the new things that have appeared about the case, to have a fair sentence after 15 years on death row.
When it was their turn to speak, the exonerated ones showed their discontent with the justice system for not recognizing their failures in time and making them experience a tragedy in their lives.
One of them is Johnny Hincapié, who was born in Colombia and went to the United States with his family as a child. At the age of 19 for a murder committed in the New York subway system, he was sentenced to 25 years, but there were other people who committed the crime and two of them said that he had nothing to do with it and they exonerated him, but until he was able to get out he had already spent 25 years in prison.
Oscar Vela also spoke, who wrote a book about the case called “The Bartow Crimes” and then, after the investigation, joined the defense as a lawyer, and recounted how even another DNA was found in the evidence from the scene. of the crime and how Serrano wasn’t even in town that day. In addition to that there is an issue of racism also in the case. (I)
Source: Eluniverso
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