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….