The three remaining defendants charged with manslaughter in the 2019 deaths of a UPS driver and an innocent bystander are now arguing that they should be immune from prosecution under Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, the same law invoked last month by a fourth Miami-Dade officer, whose charge was dismissed.
Broward Circuit Judge Ernest Kollra ruled last month that Jose Mateo, 33, should not be subject to prosecution because he was acting lawfully in the belief that his use of force was necessary to end a threat caused by two robber-kidnappers who instigated the confrontation. The kidnappers, Lamar Alexander and Ronnie Jerome Hill, died in the shootout, but so did their victim, UPS driver Frank Ordoñez, and Richard Cutshaw, 70, a motorist in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The shootout took place at a Miramar intersection after a chase that began in Coral Gables. Four Miami-Dade police officers were charged with manslaughter in Ordonez’s death. They were Mateo, Rodolfo Mirabal, Richard Santiesteban and Leslie Lee.
Mirabal is also charged with manslaughter in Cutshaw’s death.
Prosecutor Chuck Morton argued at Mateo’s stand-your-ground hearing that the officers used a reckless and disproportionate amount of force in the confrontation, resulting in avoidable loss of life. But Mateo’s lawyers argued successfully that in the middle of the standoff, he took the action he believed to be necessary to save lives.
Now lawyers for Mirabal, Santiesteban and Lee are making the same argument.
The case appears to be the first time the law has been invoked by a police officer to block a prosecution when the victim is not the intended target of the shooting. The Broward State Attorney’s Office is appealing Kollra’s ruling in Mateo’s case, but Kollra scheduled hearing dates in February for the other three officers to present their arguments.
“It is our belief that ‘stand your ground’ immunity does not apply in matters involving innocent bystanders, like Frank Ordoñez and Richard Cutshaw, who presented no danger to officers,” the State Attorney’s Office said in a statement issued after the Mateo ruling. “In this incident, two innocent men were killed and the lives of numerous other innocent bystanders were endangered.”
The Mateo ruling was not the first time Broward broke new ground in applying the Stand Your Ground law to law enforcement officers.
A Broward Sheriff’s deputy, Peter Peraza, was the first to successfully invoke “stand your ground” to block a prosecution. Before Peraza’s 2013 manslaughter case, the law was understood to apply only to civilians invoking the right to self-defense. Peraza successfully argued that the law applied to anyone, including law enforcement officers. The Florida Supreme Court ruled in his favor in 2018.
Rafael Olmeda can be reached at rolmeda@sunsentinel.com or 954-356-4457. Follow him on threads.net/@rafael.olmeda.