After hearing three days of testimony and evidence, a Lebanon County jury needed just a little over an hour on Friday, Sept. 27, to decide that admitted killer Jouse Ortiz-Serrano committed premeditated 1st-degree murder when he fatally shot Jose Alvarado-Rosado on Feb. 23, 2022.
Ortiz-Serrano pleaded guilty to a general criminal homicide charge in July 2023, and the jury was charged with deciding whether he was guilty of 1st-degree murder, 3rd-degree murder, or voluntary manslaughter.
A 1st-degree murder conviction carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison.
Ortiz-Serrano fired 20 shots at Alvarado, then pursued and brutally beat him on North 8th Street in Lebanon city, across the street from Lebanon Middle School.
A pathologist testified that 12 9mm rounds struck Alvarado, 10 in the back, and that three of those could have, by themselves, caused death.
Ortiz-Serrano admitted to the killing, which was caught on surveillance video and audio footage that was shown to the jury. Prosecutors argued that the shooting was revenge for Alvarado-Rosado shooting the defendant’s father about two months earlier in a drug-related incident.
Because Ortiz-Serrano admitted the killing, the central issue at trial was whether he was capable of forming the specific intent to kill when he shot Alvarado-Rosado.
Both sides agreed that Ortiz-Serrano suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as the result of discovering his father bleeding and unresponsive after being shot two months earlier, but disagreed on whether his PTSD prevented him from forming the specific intent to kill Alvarado-Rosado.
Specific intent to kill must be proven to support a conviction of 1st-degree murder, which is a premeditated crime.
Defense psychologist John Markey testified on Wednesday that Ortiz-Serrano told him and others that he was scared that Alvarado-Rosado would try to harm him after failing to kill his father.
Markey said the defendant displayed classic symptoms of PTSD leading up to his shooting Alvarado-Rosado, including nightmares, flashbacks to finding his bloody father lying on the floor, hyper-vigilance, suspicion of others, a quick startle response, and trouble sleeping.
Markey concluded that the defendant could not form specific intent to kill on the night in question because “he acted in his own mind to save his own life,” and “he believed he was protecting himself from imminent harm.”
“It was irrational, but that was his belief,” Markey told the jury.
On Thursday, the prosecution called Dr. Clarence Watson, a forensic psychiatrist, to rebut Markey’s testimony.
Watson agreed that Ortiz-Serrano suffered from PTSD, but said it was not severe enough to keep him from forming the specific intent to kill.
“It did not alter the defendant’s state of mind at the time of the murder,” the psychiatrist told the jury.
Noting that Ortiz-Serrano told others that he wanted to kill the person who shot his father, obtained a gun, put on a ski mask, and tracked down Alvarado-Rosado, Watson said this showed a series of conscious steps to accomplish the murder.
“I didn’t see any mental health disorder that would make [the defendant] suffer any diminished capacity.”
On Friday morning, assistant district attorney Brian Deiderick and defense attorney Gail Marr made their closing arguments to the jury, after which Judge Bradford Charles instructed jurors on the law applicable to the case.
Both attorneys emphasized and restated the respective opinions expressed by Drs. Markey and Watson. Marr asked the jury to return a 3rd-degree murder or voluntary manslaughter verdict. Deiderick urged them to find him guilty of murder in the 1st degree.
The defendant’s father, showing signs of right side paralysis from his shooting, was in the courtroom during closing arguments.
After the verdict was announced, Charles asked each juror individually if he or she agreed with the verdict, and all said they did.
The defendant at first seemed to be taking the verdict stoically, but after a few minutes slumped to the table, then started sobbing loudly. The defendant’s mother also sobbed loudly and called to her son from the back of the courtroom.
Outside the courtroom, Marr promised an appeal, calling the verdict “a travesty of justice.”
“I know that a life is a life,” Marr said, “but the person that my client killed robbed and basically killed my client’s father.”
After the verdict, Deiderick said “this gun violence has gotten out of hand. Everybody’s first answer is to go get their gun and take care of it. It was clear that the defendant … hunted the victim, down Church Street onto 8th Street, shot 20 rounds at him, hit him with 12, 10 in the back, then proceeded to beat him to the point the gun broke.
“That’s unacceptable, that’s premeditated, and the jury saw it for what it was.”
Charles has set sentencing for Nov. 27. Pennsylvania law mandates life in prison without possibility of parole.
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