FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — A Florida judge rejected a prosecutor’s impassioned plea Monday, saying he would not reconsider his acquittal of a nursing home administrator in the overheating deaths of nine patients after Hurricane Irma knocked out the facility’s air conditioning in 2017.
Circuit Judge John J. Murphy III listened impassively as prosecutor Charles Morton made his case Monday morning for reconsideration. But after about an hour of deliberation Murphy upheld his Friday decision to acquit Jorge Carballo of manslaughter — even before the three-week trial reached the jury.
Murphy agreed with Carballo’s attorneys that it would be double jeopardy to reverse his decision and let the trial continue. In his earlier ruling, he agreed with the defense that prosecutors had failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that their client had acted with reckless disregard for human life or had demonstrated conscious indifference to his patients’ safety, two necessary components for conviction.
The judge found “undisputed evidence” that Carballo’s employees had tried to provide care to the patients and, in Monday’s ruling, said nothing presented in court would have changed his mind even if he could have.
“The state has not presented sufficient evidence that the Defendant acted with culpable negligence,” Murphy wrote Monday. Prosecutors cannot appeal the ruling, which is final.
Carballo’s attorneys did not immediately return a phone call seeking reaction to the ruling.
Carballo, 65, was operating the Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills in September 2017 when Irma knocked out power to the 150-bed facility’s air conditioning. Temperatures rose inside the building over two-plus days before patients started dying on the second floor. That’s where improperly installed temporary air conditioners had actually increased the already sweltering temperatures.
In Hollywood, four patients were found dead initially after emergency workers received a call about…
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