Prosecution and defense attorneys in a Lebanon County courtroom finished presenting witnesses and evidence Thursday afternoon in the homicide trial of admitted killer Jouse Ortiz-Serrano. The case was expected to go to the jury Friday afternoon.
Ortiz-Serrano pleaded guilty in February, 23, 2022 fatal shooting of Jean Alvarado-Rosado on N. 8th Street in Lebanon City. The jury will decide whether the defendant is sentenced for 1st degree murder, 3rd degree murder, or voluntary manslaughter.
Prosecutors contend that Ortiz-Serrano planned the killing as an act of revenge because he believed that Alvarado-Rosado had weeks earlier shot and paralyzed his father in a drug-related dispute.
Ortiz-Serrano discovered his father, who survived, almost a day after the shooting, bleeding and unresponsive on his apartment floor. No one has been charged in connection with the father’s shooting.
Testimony and video evidence established that both the defendant and the victim were wearing dark ski masks at the time of the incident.
Ortiz-Serrano’s attorney, Gail Marr, contends that her client could not form the specific intent to kill, a requirement for 1st degree murder, because he was suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. The PTSD, she contends, was due to the trauma of finding his father shot in the head and the fear that Alvarado-Rosado, who he thought was his father’s shooter, would also try to kill him.
If the jury accepts the defense theory, it could return a 3rd degree murder verdict, which would carry a 20 to 40 year sentence.
On Wednesday and Thursday, the jury heard from a pathologist who performed an autopsy on the victim’s body, police officers who collected evidence, a ballistics expert, and the defendant himself.
The jury also heard from a defense psychologist and a prosecution psychiatrist who disagreed on whether the defendant, at the time of the shooting, was able to form a specific intent to kill due to his post traumatic stress syndrome.
Specific intent to kill must be established to prove premeditated 1st degree murder.
Closing arguments by the attorneys were scheduled to start at 9 a.m. Friday morning, followed by the Judge Bradford Charles’ instructions to the jury. The jury is expected to start deliberations around noon.
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