ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — An Orange County man convicted of molesting a child has been ordered a new trial.
The decision was made by an appellate court judge on Friday , who said the prosecutor painted Marco Rodriguez in a bad light during closing arguments and that his defense attorney did nothing to stop the claims.
The prosecutor called the defendant a liar seven times and a pedophile, and made sarcastic remarks. The judge said the prosecutor crossed the line.
The appellate judge scolded both sides for their roles in the matter. "Confidence in our judicial system suffers when prosecutors are permitted to utilize clearly inappropriate closing arguments to convict," the judge said. "Winning at all costs is too high a price to be paid by too many."
“Prosecutors know where the line is, but what happens often times is they get a sense that they may be losing the case, and that’s when they will do or say anything they can to get that conviction,” said WFTV legal analyst Bill Sheaffer.
The victim will now have to tell her story of being molested to another judge and another jury.
The case stems from 2014 when the now teenage girl was an adolescent. She told Orange County detectives about the sexual abuse she said suffered when she was 5 years old.
A jury convicted Rodriguez of lewd and lascivious molestation in 2015 and he was sentenced to 18 years in prison.
Eyewitness News contacted the attorney who represents Rodriguez. He said he didn’t want to comment due to the order for a retrial, but said he has not been contacted to retry the case.
The state attorney’s office has not responded to our request for information.
Cox Media Group