Prosecutors again challenging officers' opening fire on kidnappers in UPS shootout

Broward County prosecutors Monday continued challenging the self-defense claims of police officers charged with manslaughter in the December 2019 killings of a hijacked UPS driver and bystander after, the judge has already found, one of the armed robbers and kidnappers they were chasing opened fire on them first.

Judge Ernest Kollra in September dismissed the case against one of four officers charged — Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Deputy Jose Mateo — after the same kind of hearing being conducted this week.

It’s called a Stand Your Ground hearing, where the state must prove the officers did not have a reasonable fear of death or great bodily harm to themselves or others when they used deadly force.

Both criminals were found dead after 20 officers fired more than 220 times over 25 seconds, but so were the innocent men: UPS driver Frank Ordonez and motorist Richard Cutshaw.

The three Miami-Dade officers seeking dismissal this week are suspended officer Rodolfo Mirabal, now-retired officer Leslie Lee and Richard Santiesteban, who was terminated for unrelated reasons after the Dec. 5, 2019 shootings.

Mirabal is the only one facing two manslaughter counts because the one projectile found to have killed Cutshaw came from his firearm.

Mateo said he returned to active status with the sheriff’s office after his charge was dropped. The state has appealed the dismissal of Mateo’s case to the 4th District Court of Appeal, but it has yet to consider briefs or order oral arguments in the matter.

On Monday, assistant state attorney Chuck Morton said the state would not concede in this hearing that Kollra was correct in his last ruling when he found one of the fleeing felons, Ronnie Hill, fired first toward officers and the public.

Kollra agreed the three remaining defendants were not entitled to rely on his previous ruling, as the state now has another opportunity to present new witnesses and evidence to prove these officers were not justified.

But, as he did in the Mateo case, the judge denied state motions to reject the stand your ground defense — requiring this hearing to take place even as all await the appellate court decision.

Morton has said if the state loses appeals of Mateo’s dismissal, the state would drop charges against the other officers.

The state’s first and only witness so far was an FBI evidence recovery team leader who spent the day describing spent cartridges, live ammunition, firearms and other evidence found at the scene, at Miramar Parkway and Flamingo Road.

One bit of new information not disclosed in the Mateo hearing: a spent cartridge was recovered stuck in the barrel of the firearm the judge previously found Hill fired toward police and the public.

The FBI expert testified that indicated the gun had jammed after it fired its last shot.

The state had previously argued the absence of any spent casings connected to that gun from the crime scene suggested Hill did not fire the weapon there. It did not change its position even after the judge, based on video and eyewitness testimony in the Mateo hearing, found Hill did in fact fire first.

The discovery of the spent casing stuck in the barrel could explain why no such spent casing was recovered from the scene, although the defense is also pointing out on cross examination it could have landed on a car or under the tires of a car that drove away from the scene before police and the FBI secured it.