George Pino Boat Crash Trial: Which Closing Argument Wins?

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: If I had to close for the state, or for the defense in this case, what would I do? Well, stick around, because I'm going to tell you. Hi, Tony DeWitt here. Formerly, I was a Missouri attorney in active practice. Then I retired. Then I un-retired and started a YouTube channel. And I bring you all kinds of stuff about trials and the law. So no legal advice is given, but stay tuned. This is what we're talking about today. Today, we're following the trial of Miami-area developer George Pino, who is charged with manslaughter and vessel homicide arising from a tragic Labor Day weekend boat crash in Biscayne Bay back in 2022. Prosecutors alleged that Pino was operating a 29-foot boat carrying his family and a group of teenage girls when he sped through a channel and slammed into a marked navigational aid, throwing passengers into the water. 17-year-old Lucy Fernandez later died, and another young woman suffered life-altering injuries. The defense maintains this was a terrible accident, not a crime, and disputes the state's allegations of recklessness. So, let's get you caught up on what happened today. A closing has to be part argument and part fact. So, I believe it's always best to start with the facts. I would go through the evidence, and of course, the state goes first. So, I would go through the evidence carefully with the jury, viewing each witness's testimony and its importance. And then, I would close with this argument. Careless. Reckless. Wanton. Willful. Words meant to describe an escalating state of mind. Do we look at one event, or just the outcome, to judge these things? No. Because to really understand the differences in these states of mind, we have to understand that simple negligence, being careless, often hurts no one. If you run a stop sign, but you don't hit anybody. Were you negligent? Oh yes, very much so. But, you didn't hurt anybody. Now, you've all probably been there. It's been a long drive. Maybe you're listening to an audio book, and imagining what's happening. And all of a sudden, your right tire slides onto the shoulder, and you look ahead and parked a few hundred feet ahead on the shoulder is a car. You yank the wheel back in time to avoid the crash, narrowly missing that car. You decide to turn off the book. That momentary carelessness, that scares you. It was a distraction that didn't harm anyone, but you. Because it boosted your blood pressure a hundred times, practically. But again, you learn the lesson, you turn off the book, and you pay attention to the road. That's what good, principled people do. And if you realize maybe you're a little too tired to be driving, you pull off, you find a safe place, and you take a nap. But let's consider a different scenario. You went out with coworkers. You had a few drinks, just a couple. You might even describe it as two beers. You then knew you needed to get home. So you jumped in the car and began to drive. And your cell phone rang. And you looked for it, and you couldn't find it. Ah, there it is, down between the seats. And you pull the cell phone up, and you hit the answer key. And then you look up in front of you, just in time to see a stopped pickup truck. You hit it. Your car is wrecked. The pickup's totaled. And you've committed a DWI. That's more than carelessness. You did three things wrong. You drank. You drove. And you allowed yourself to be distracted at a critical moment. That goes above Mere negligence. That's a criminal act. Driving under the influence. Now, let's take the above and add that you were speeding. 85 miles per hour on a city street. The driver of the pickup that you hit is dead. And you're in the hospital wearing handcuffs. Now it's four things wrong. Two of those things are intentional, drinking and speeding. And two things are merely carelessness. But nonetheless, somebody is dead. You see, ordinary negligence is not paying attention for a moment or two. Carelessness and recklessness are that negligence magnified by intentional conduct. And that conduct is described under our laws as willful and wanton. Under Florida law, willful and wanton conduct is not merely careless conduct. It occupies the territory between ordinary negligence and what the civil law would refer to as an intentional tort. Florida courts over the years have frankly struggled with the exact wording. But the consistent theme is that the actor is aware of a serious danger and proceeds anyway with conscious indifference to the consequences. Willful and wanton conduct is the conscious and intentional evil doing of an act, like driving a boat, like letting people drink on the boat, or the failure to do an act, like stopping people from drinking on the boat after they've had one, with knowledge that injury is likely to result, coupled with a reckless indifference to the consequences and to the safety or the rights of others. Now, those two words mean different things even though they're lumped together. Willful focuses on the deliberate or intentional nature of the conduct. The actor intentionally does the act. The actor need not intend the injury, but he does intend the conduct himself, like driving the boat at 47 miles per hour. Wanton focuses on the actor's state of mind toward the risk. The actor proceeds with conscious indifference to a known danger, or an obvious risk of harm. Think of it like an ascending staircase. The bottom step, that's ordinary negligence. I wasn't careful enough. The second step is gross negligence. I should have realized the danger, but I acted anyway. The third step, the willful and wanton step, is the top step, and it says I knew of the danger, or even if I didn't consciously know, it was so open and obvious that no one could reasonably ignore it, and I just proceeded anyway. So, let's start with what George knew on the night in question. First, he knew he had been drinking, slowing his reflexes by his own admission. Second, without any meaningful supervision as to the amount of alcohol consumed, you remember Cammie testified she had 10 drinks, he had allowed his teenage passengers to consume lots of alcohol. Approximately 4,000 to 4,300 Americans under the age of 21 die every year from excessive alcohol use. Those deaths occur in motor vehicle crashes, drownings, falls, alcohol poisonings, and homicides. About 1,900 deaths involve motor vehicle crashes. About 1,600 deaths involve homicides. Hundreds more result from falls, drownings, burns, and of course, alcohol poisoning, when you drink so much that it stops the oxygen transport in your blood. And that doesn't count serious injuries. The Center for Disease Control has reported that roughly 188,000 alcohol-related emergency department visits annually are among people aged 12 to 20. Not all of these are life-threatening injuries, but they represent incidents serious enough to require emergency medical treatment. Alcohol is implicated in a very large percentage of severe adolescent trauma cases. Research cited in adolescent alcohol literature estimates that about 50% of serious head injuries in the United States adolescents are involved with alcohol use. Even if George did not know the exact statistics, he knew that these girls were going home at some point and might drive to get there. He let them drink anyway. Moreover, he knew or should have known that alcohol would have impaired their ability to protect themselves in the event of an accident. Another thing, even in waters without a specific speed or wake requirement, boaters know that they must maintain a speed reasonable for conditions. He was going south. He was going 47 miles per hour on the water where boats have no brakes and limited ability to turn in a narrow channel. And that's way too fast. He knew that. You might remember that one of the Florida water people talked about how girls told him that he didn't seem to be going that fast. But remember, their perceptions were dulled by alcohol. But when he was trying to get them to Elliott Key, they asked him not to go so fast. He knew that there should have been a lookout. He knew that he should have been looking ahead. He knew he should have been keeping that safe lookout to protect his passengers. Instead, he was looking behind him at some young bathing suit clad women. Surely he knew the risk. Surely he appreciated the risk. And sure enough, he plowed right ahead like a man wealthy enough not to care. He hit the channel marker, and he ended Lucy Fernandez's life. He permanently disabled Ms. Puig, and he ruined her life. And he traumatized all the other girls, even his own daughter and wife, who gave a fair account of herself after the wreck by helping Mia, but seems to suggest now that it was all just a big mistake. Her tears here in court were not for Mia, not for Cammie, not for Lucy, but for her wealthy lifestyle and membership in the Ocean Reef Club. The families of the victims are sitting right over there. And they're looking to you today for justice. But don't be confused. Justice is not revenge. Justice is about balancing the scales. Because some losses can never really ever be balanced. It's like making an entry in history's ledger. The law cannot restore what was taken, but it can officially record the wrong that occurred. Who was responsible for that wrong? And that the community did not sit idly by or simply look away. For our families here, justice is like a lighthouse on a dark shoreline. It doesn't bring the ship back. It doesn't undo the storm. But it tells everyone who comes afterward where the danger was and that the loss will not be forgotten. And finally, understand that a criminal verdict cannot heal grief. It's more like a headstone. It doesn't bring back the person you've lost. But it stands as a permanent public acknowledgement that this life mattered and that circumstances of their death mattered. When you go back into that jury room, I want you to give Lucy Fernandez justice. I want you to give the Puigs and Ms. Puig that justice. I want you to do the right thing. Now, if I was closing for the defense, you'd have to imagine me with a larger head full of hair, which might very well be impossible. But do give it a try. I would go through the TBI testimony and the testimony from the state's witnesses that helped the defense. And there was a lot of it. The FWC officers didn't smell any alcohol. They didn't think he was impaired. None of the girls thought he was impaired. I would jump back and forth between witnesses. And I would move in random order from topic to topic and then back again to create the appearance of there being lots of such evidence. And then I would close with this argument. The state is right. We can't bring back Lucy Fernandez. Not for a day. Not for an hour. Not for a minute. We can't undo the harm to Ms. Puig. We don't have the power. Mr. Pino knows this was a tragedy. He's well aware of what happened. You can't imagine the soul crushing weight he feels when he gets up every morning and relives that moment that Lucy was brought up from below the boat. You can't imagine the gallons of tears he and his wife have shed. You can't imagine what it's like to suffer a brain injury and be accused of lying simply because you can't remember specifics. It's just a living hell for them. Now, if it was in his power, George Pino would do a lot of things differently. But it isn't in his power. He can't go back. He can't undo this. He's lost lifetime friendships because of this. And those mattered. Both to him and to the other folks. His wife has lost friends. His daughter has lost friends. They all feel the weight that crushes George every day. And they all pay a price every day for what happened. You can believe that George should have slowed down. He believes that too. You can believe that he shouldn't have had those two beers. Although everyone acknowledged he did not appear impaired. And the only reason that fact is even in this case is because he forthrightly disclosed that to the Florida water conservation officer. He had two beers earlier in the day. He wasn't trying to hide it. You can believe that it was foolish for him to allow teens to drink on his boat. He likely believes that too. But these were not first-time drinkers consumed by, and the drinks weren't consumed by people unfamiliar with their effects. The girls knew when to say when. Perhaps they just didn't. You can believe that he should have known better. But George still maintains a rogue wave from a passing boat that caused the accident. They say there wasn't one. But none of those FWC folks were out there on the water at that time. The state gave you emotion. They gave you lots of emotion. They were very heavy on emotional testimony. But you know what they're light on? They're light on facts that support recklessness and willful and wanton. You can believe all the evidence in this case and still reach the quite reasonable conclusion that this was just a tragic accident caused by factors outside George Pino's control. A distinct principle of justice is that people should not be punished when they have done no wrong. Our common law came to us from England. William Blackstone was a famous English barrister who wrote a book called Commentaries on the Laws of England in the 1760s. He said it is better that 10 guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer. This has become known as Blackstone's ratio and it has heavily influenced American criminal law. It comes down to this. One of the oldest principles in Anglo-American law is that the purpose of a criminal trial is not simply to punish the guilty. It is equally to protect the innocent. A system that occasionally fails to convict the guilty is regrettable. A system that punishes the innocent is intolerable. Set George Pino free. Free his wife and child from the worry that their husband and their father is going to have to go to prison. Punishing the innocent, as the prosecutor noted, won't bring the dead back or heal the disabled. But it will stain the legacy of Florida justice forever. So I joined with the prosecution in asking you to do the right thing. Except the right thing here is to acquit George Pino. So there's a flavor of what I would do if I was on either side of this case. And of course, to make it fit on YouTube, I had to truncate it quite a bit. There's a lot more that I would have said. So after writing this out for several dozen pages, I went through and picked out the parts that I thought crucial and to fit them into a video that I thought would be watchable. So I didn't put in a rebuttal here. The state does get a rebuttal. I'm not sure exactly what I'd say. And really, I couldn't do a rebuttal at this point because I don't know what he will say. I just know what I would have said. This is a tough case. It could go either way. It's absolutely a 50/50 proposition at this point. Although both sides would tell you it's more like 90/10. And it can't be 90/10 on both sides. So it has to be a lot closer to 50/50. And I would anticipate a very long time for jury deliberations. If for whatever reason, the jury is not out long, that's more than likely going to be an acquittal. If the jury is out longer, then it could wind up being a hung jury or it could wind up being a conviction. I won't put odds on any of those because what juries do is what juries do. And you can't predict what juries do. Every lawyer wishes they could predict what was in the heads of those jurors so that they could take a small rhetorical hammer and knock it out. But they can't. So we'll have to see how things go in closing arguments. I thank you for watching my video. Come catch me tomorrow after this is done and we'll talk about it. Have a great day. Thanks for watching my video. I really appreciate it. And today, as you go about your business, would you try to do just one kind thing for somebody? It doesn't have to be a big thing. You can open a door for somebody who has their arms full. You could buy somebody a Coke. You could let the manager know when somebody does a really good job for you at the grocery store or at Walmart or someplace else. There are all kinds of things we can do to make people's lives better. And a lot of times, people will always remember to go to the manager and complain. They very seldom remember to go to the manager and say, "Hey, you know, that guy over there in produce is top notch." And I think it's really important to do that because I want to make the world a better place. I know you're here. Probably because you want to make the world a better place. So let's do that. Now let's be respectful of one another. And thank God we live in the greatest country in the free world. I do think that the good folks at YouTube have a few things they want to show you up here that you might be interested in. And if you are, I'd appreciate you clicking. Thanks. Have a great day.