George Pino Never Intended to Hurt Anyone Prior To Boat Crash: Defense

Added: 2026-06-10

[00:00:04]Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Can everybody hear me? Okay.

[00:00:08]Is the microphone working right?

[00:00:10]>> I think it is.

[00:00:13]I >> think we all agree that we're here today because there was a tragedy.

[00:00:19]Lucy died.

[00:00:21]And it's it's painful. It's painful for everybody to think about it, hear about it, talk about it.

[00:00:31]And over the course of the trial, we'll have to relive those moments. And George Pino is going to have to relive those moments.

[00:00:39]He loved Lucy. He'd known Lucy since she was a little girl.

[00:00:45]He loved Lucy like a daughter, like his own daughter.

[00:00:50]The state admits this was not George's intention for this to happen.

[00:00:57]He did not intend to crash into a marker.

[00:01:01]He did not intend for anybody to be hurt. His own daughter, his own wife, his own body was on that boat.

[00:01:12]He had traveled on that boat safely through that channel many, many times.

[00:01:17]Many times.

[00:01:19]and he was celebrating his daughter's 18th birthday with some of the best friends his daughter had since childhood. These were generational friendships.

[00:01:30]George's parents' generation, George's generation, and then the next generation.

[00:01:40]George would never think to put any of these girls lives in jeopardy.

[00:01:47]And when he was traveling at 47 miles per hour with everybody seated on that boat with George at the helm, a perfectly clear day, the seas were calm.

[00:02:04]A boat like that could have been powered not with just 600 horsepower engines, but 700 horsepower engines. Although George didn't put the maximum horsepower engines on that boat, that boat can travel at upwards of 50 plus miles an hour fully loaded.

[00:02:24]There was no weight restriction or personal restriction that George was violating when he had all of his passengers on the boat.

[00:02:35]There was a life preserver for each and every one of them on board. Although the law doesn't require that passengers on a boat wear the life preserver, there was no speed limit in the channel.

[00:02:52]And there are channels with speed limits. When you come back to port, you might see a sign that says, "No wake."

[00:03:00]Wake W.

[00:03:03]Boats have to travel slowly when coming back into port sometimes.

[00:03:08]There might be a marker that says minimum wake and there are markers that have speed limits throughout the intra coastal waterway.

[00:03:18]But Cutter Bank channel in 2022 had no posted speed limits. We are now in 2026.

[00:03:29]There are still no posted speed limits at Cutter Bank channel. Even after this tragedy happened, our legislature has not imposed >> such an argument sustained.

[00:03:44]>> There is no there was none then, there is none now because under ordinary circumstances traveling at 47 miles per hour, which George Pino had done many times, is not a violation of the law. It is not unsafe seammanship.

[00:04:11]Still, still George crashed.

[00:04:19]The state's theory, as you've heard it today, is a bit of a mishmash.

[00:04:25]On the one hand, they say to you, "Two beers trying to suggest to you this is about alcohol impairment."

[00:04:35]The go the state knows better than that.

[00:04:39]>> Objection argument.

[00:04:40]>> The evidence will show >> the evidence will show. Thank you.

[00:04:43]>> I apologize.

[00:04:45]>> Multiple eyewitnesses, at least eight, I expect will testify at this trial. eight who observed George Pino at the sandbar just after the collision, the crash and law enforcement officers themselves who observed George Pino eye to eye examining him purposely to determine was George Pino impaired.

[00:05:19]Each of those witnesses who examined and observed George Pino were satisfied that George Pino was not impaired.

[00:05:29]That included the adults that were at the sandbar.

[00:05:34]It included Lucy's dad who was at the sandbar himself enjoying the festivities with his daughter, with the Penos, and with the other families that were there.

[00:05:49]And the adults that were at the sandbar were also consuming some alcohol. They too operated their motor vessels after consuming some alcohol, including Lucy's dad.

[00:06:04]Lucy's dad would never have allowed his daughter to ride back with a George Pino if Lucy's dad thought that George Pino was impaired.

[00:06:16]And Lucy's dad saw that George Pino had had a beer and was satisfied that George Pino was not impaired. This was not the first time George Pino had a beer in his life.

[00:06:28]So you'll hear testimony from the adults at the sandbar, including George Pino's wife.

[00:06:38]George Pino's wife was on that boat. She would not have allowed her husband to operate a boat with her own life, her daughter's life, and the lives of the girls that Mrs. Pino had helped raise.

[00:06:53]Some of these girls grew up in the Pino home all the time spending time together. Mrs. Pino will testify.

[00:07:02]George, her husband, was not impaired.

[00:07:04]She wouldn't have risked her own life.

[00:07:09]>> Come side.

[00:07:16]Thank your honors. Good morning.

[00:07:19]>> Can everyone hear me? Okay.

[00:07:23]>> It's too low.

[00:07:26]Good morning again.

[00:07:29]I want to begin the morning with the morning of September 4th, 2022 when all of the families were at Ocean Reef gathered to celebrate the birthday of Mr. Pino's daughter.

[00:07:48]Several families there and they'd been there, some of them had been there that weekend and it was going to be a glorious day.

[00:07:58]Mr. Pino, he was sort of known as uh the camp counselor, what he's been with these families for many years. He was organizing events and that day he had organized a gathering.

[00:08:12]The day would start off with a virtual mass for the kids that woke up.

[00:08:18]Then Mr. Pino had organized a little pickle ball gathering, a tournament.

[00:08:24]After the pickle ball tournament, they were going to all convoy by boat to Elliot Key, call it Billy's Point or Coons Point, and they were going to spend several hours enjoying the beautiful weather. And it just happened to be an ideal day for boating.

[00:08:44]The seas were calm, no wind, no rain.

[00:08:51]And so after the pickle ball tournament finished and all the kids gathered up, Mr. Pino was going to operate the vessel. He was going to captain the Rabalo from Ocean Reef and travel the distance to Elliot Key, a voyage he had made many times before.

[00:09:12]The 29 ft Rabalo, a well-built boat, it's been in fabrication for decades.

[00:09:20]It was equipped with twin 300 horsepower engines.

[00:09:26]The boat actually is rated to handle even larger engines.

[00:09:31]Mr. Pino had navigated that course many times. The GPS data that you heard the prosecutor tell you about will show that he had navigated that area many times.

[00:09:46]There were 14 people on board. Mr. Ino, his wife, his daughter, and the daughter's girlfriends.

[00:09:56]And they navigated from Ocean Reef the distance to Elliot Key and then anchored in that area. Other boats joined the festivities.

[00:10:10]And you heard that as part of that afternoon, the adults and some of the children were consuming alcohol.

[00:10:20]And as I alluded to yesterday, there were adults there who had observed Mr. Pino that day, as they had many other times.

[00:10:31]And the testimony, the evidence in the case will be that Mr. Pino was observed with a beer. He admitted later on he'd had two beers.

[00:10:41]And it's not two beers in quotes as the prosecutor did in her opening statement.

[00:10:46]That is the evidence. The evidence will show there's not one more beer than two.

[00:10:53]Not one more. It was two beers over the course of several hours, two or two and a half hours.

[00:11:02]This was not the first time Mr. Pino and these adults had engaged in these kinds of gatherings in the past.

[00:11:11]The other adults there, Mr. Suarez, Mr. Hardo, they knew Mr. Pino. They too had enjoyed the afternoon with Mr. Pino. They observed Mr. Pino.

[00:11:24]All the adults that were there that day were satisfied that Mr. Pino was not impaired.

[00:11:35]Sometime late that afternoon, Mr. Pino pulls up the anchor of the Rabbalo. And now it is time to head back to Ocean Reef because that night they were going to celebrate the birthday, I think, at 9:00 p.m.

[00:11:50]Contrary to the statement by the prosecutor, Mr. Pino was not nervous or anxious about making sure the girls were IG Instagram ready. As if Mr. Mr. Pino was anxious to get the girls back home so they could have enough time to shower. There was plenty of time.

[00:12:11]Mr. Pino was navigating back to Ocean Reef as he had done many times before.

[00:12:18]He was not thrillseeking.

[00:12:20]He was not speeding. He was not doing donuts. He was not racing any other boat. He was simply going back. He was in essentially an inter exc excuse me an internal autopilot as he had done many times before.

[00:12:37]On this one occasion on this one time something went wrong. Mr. Pino according to the state's expert who you will hear testify somehow lost situational awareness.

[00:12:52]meaning he must have lost track of the markers along the way and he elided or crashed into marker number 15.

[00:13:04]He wasn't intending to do it. He wasn't trying to come as close as possible and see if he could just skim across that channel. This was pure and simple an accident.

[00:13:17]>> Objection to argument. The evidence will show, the evidence will show that Mr. Pino had no intention of putting anyone's life in danger. He wasn't intending to try to come as close to the marker as he possibly could. But on that day, there was no other boat coming at him. It was a clear day. and his destination, Ocean Reef. Once that boat would have cleared marker 15, it was wide open bay until Angel Fish Creek. That's the next passage that the vessel would need to travel to go back to Ocean Reef.

[00:13:59]When Mr. Ino elided with that marker.

[00:14:03]When he crashed into that marker, the boat eventually capsized.

[00:14:12]The testimony will show that Mr. Pino himself was knocked unconscious.

[00:14:18]The testimony will be from those that were there. They thought Mr. Pino was dead.

[00:14:24]He was on the surface of the boat bleeding from his head. He had injured his arm. He only came to once the boat eventually capsized completely. He falls into the water minutes later. He comes to testimony will show that he had suffered a concussion, a traumatic brain injury, and still he was able with presence of mind to hold on to that boat.

[00:14:56]And with a traumatic brain injury, as the testimony will show, he was disoriented.

[00:15:03]He obviously did not have all of his senses, but he's trying to make sense of what has happened.

[00:15:11]You've seen some, you will see, if you haven't already, with some of the pictures shown that the girls and Mrs. Pino are in the water.

[00:15:22]Soon, another boat came up.

[00:15:26]David Rodriguez, a good Samaritan, doesn't know the Pino family, happened to be coming northbound. A few minutes later, he arrives and he observes the scene and he sees Mr. Pino hanging onto that boat.

[00:15:47]As you heard and will hear, Lucy was unaccounted for.

[00:15:56]And Mr. Pino makes an effort to go under the boat and retrieve and locate and find Lucy Fernandez as she had been trapped under that boat. And it was Mr. Pino who reached under and brought Lucy Fernandez to the surface so that efforts could be made to save her life. Even in the condition he was in with a brain injury, he made every effort he could once he was directed, once he was able to get his senses back to try to save Lucy's life.

[00:16:33]And so you can imagine the emotional toll that that takes on a human being because we all know that eventually Lucy died.

[00:16:46]And it was George Pino who tried to save her life by retrieving her from under the boat. His efforts failed.

[00:16:57]David Rodriguez, the good Samaritan I was telling you about, called for Mr. Pino to get onto Mr. Rodriguez's boat. And David Rodriguez will testify that he was observing Mr. Ino closely, purposely.

[00:17:16]David Rodriguez was wondering how could this happen? Perhaps David Rodriguez thought this was someone who was impaired. And so David Rodriguez, a man who has nothing to do with the Pino family, a man whose only interest was to help and save lives, looked at Mr. Pino purposely with intent and was convinced after dealing with Mr. Pino, Mr. Ino was not impaired and you will hear his testimony and this was minutes after the elision.

[00:17:52]But Mr. Pino in David Rodriguez's view and what you'll hear him say was disoriented. He was in shock, a natural reaction to a crash and a brain injury.

[00:18:09]Law enforcement fire rescue came to the scene.

[00:18:17]Everyone who could be rescued from the water was.

[00:18:22]And at that time, Mr. Ino was in the custody of two Fish and Wildlife Commission officers who were checking him out to make sure he was okay and to find out what happened.

[00:18:42]You will hear from Lieutenant Thompson who has training, experience, expertise on the issue of impairment and he was with Mr. Pino for the next several hours and he too looked at Mr. Pino purposely and saw that Mr. Pino was not impaired.

[00:19:08]Officer Hernandez was with Mr. Pino all of that time. He too observed Mr. Pino purposely smelled him, looked at his eyes.

[00:19:20]All of these individuals were looking to make sure that Mr. Pino was not impaired and they they concluded he was not impaired.

[00:19:31]I recognize I'm spending an awful amount of time talking about this issue of impairment. Mr. Ino is not charged with voting under the influence. But when I saw the prosecutor put the two beers in quotes, I thought it was important that I >> argument your honor.

[00:19:47]>> I think it's the evidence will show conclusively. I believe there'll be eight witnesses that will tell you that Mr. Pino was not impaired.

[00:20:07]And so Mr. Pino is questioned about what happened. Lieutenant Thompson, who's wearing one of those body cams, is trying to figure out what happened. Of course, make sure that everybody receives medical attention right away.

[00:20:25]And you will see Mr. Pino on video. So you'll be able to look at Mr. in real time with your own eyes. You will be able to look at Mr. Pino purposely with the scrutiny that you should give it to see that Mr. Pino was not impaired and he was questioned about what had happened. And even though he was not alcohol impaired, he was still suffering from a traumatic brain injury.

[00:20:53]At some point that night, he had to receive medical attention. And you will see that his head was bandaged up. He was eventually taken to a hospital to be treated. But even with his head bandaged up, he was being questioned and he was trying to recall what had happened. How did this accident happen?

[00:21:14]And he explained as best as he could under those circumstances what he recalled.

[00:21:22]And you will find out that Mr. Pino's recollection of that event was affected by the concussion he sustained that he was relaying details that could not be accurate. For example, what kind of engine do you have on your boat, Mr. Pino? And he told the officer, "Twin 225s."

[00:21:45]Actually, Mr. Pino has twin 300s.

[00:21:49]He did have a boat that had twin 225s.

[00:21:51]His prior boat had twin 225 horsepower engines, but he reported that this boat had twin 225s. Obviously, his memory or his brain was not functioning in a way that it would ordinarily function had he not sustained a concussion.

[00:22:10]He reported that he had gone under the boat to rescue Nati, a different girl.

[00:22:15]We know it was Lucy, and we know that Mr. Pino has known Lucy all of his life.

[00:22:19]And yet when he was reporting who he had rescued under the boat, he reported that it was Nati, another girl on the boat.

[00:22:28]He had innocently but mistakenly confused who it was he had retrieved from under the vessel.

[00:22:36]He was asked to prepare, as best he could, a seating chart of where the various passengers were seated. And when he prepared that seating chart, he had the passengers in locations different than what it turns out to be.

[00:22:53]He also was recalling that there was a big wave that had come from another boat in the distance and that the wave had caused him to lose control of the steering wheel.

[00:23:11]Photographs and other testimony suggest that there was no other boat that day and that Mr. Pino's memory may not have been accurate.

[00:23:22]We cannot prove, we don't know if there in fact was another boat out there that may have thrown away from a distance, a wake, a wave, but we can't establish it for certain. And so it appears that Mr. Pino's memory of how that accident happened cannot be relied upon given his traumatic brain injury. And we will present testimony from doctor who has examined the records who will confirm that in fact Mr. Pino given the circumstances did suffer from a traumatic brain injury that would result in what the professionals call false memories. Memories that the person believed to be true but are not accurate.

[00:24:04]When you get clocked and you get hit over the head and you lose your memory, the memories that come back of the event, sort of like an amnesia, and your brain trying to make sense of things, puts together old memories with new memories. And that memory they call confabulation. You'll hear testimony about that. And I share that with you because when Mr. Pino was trying to make sense of what happened when the officer was interviewing him to try to figure out how did the crash happen. Mr. Pino was reporting what his memory faulty as it was of that few minutes and few seconds before the elision.

[00:24:50]We do have the benefit of the global position satellite machine that was on Mr. Pino's boat.

[00:24:58]There are actually two of them.

[00:25:01]And what they show Mr. Pino driving very much on a steady course that day and during that return trip from Billy's Point back to Ocean Reef.

[00:25:15]There's no evidence he was zigzagging or hot dogging or thrillseeking.

[00:25:24]What the evidence will show is that as he was going through the channel, when there were markers left for him to clear before it was wide open bay to Angel Fish Creek, at some point, Mr. Pino's boat, the Rabalo, starts making a a turn or a veer in the direction of Angel Fish Creek.

[00:25:44]And you'll see there was a red marker on his right.

[00:25:49]And then there's the green marker 15 in the distance. And 9 seconds later, Mr. Pino's Ravalo crashes into that boat, into that post or into that pilot.

[00:26:03]The stage theory that I believe the expert will advance is that Mr. Pino lost situational awareness. He should have seen it. it was right there in front of him and he didn't see it because we know he wasn't trying to hit it.

[00:26:21]So I think what the evidence will show even by the state's own theory is that Mr. Pino did not intend to hit the marker.

[00:26:34]He lost situational awareness.

[00:26:37]That's their theory. that for those nine seconds he didn't look ahead to see that there was a marker in front of him.

[00:26:46]Now the GPS interestingly you heard the prosecutor say the GPS is uh not biased. Uh it is not subject to money, privilege or power I think was the words that the prosecutor used.

[00:27:03]>> Objection to argument the evidence is Interestingly enough though, the GPS is not perfect either.

[00:27:16]You'll see that the GPS records data.

[00:27:19]What it does is it simply records points in time as the boat is moving and then it does computations.

[00:27:27]This GPS, as their own expert will show, sometimes makes what I'll just describe as errors, computational errors.

[00:27:37]In one instance, it registers at some point in time the boat is traveling at 77 miles an hour, but the expert knows that that's not possible. The boat can't achieve that. The GPS is making an error.

[00:27:51]The GPS will show a boat traveling over land when we know the boat is not traveling over land. It's fallible.

[00:27:59]And to the point of this case, the GPS on Mr. Ino's boat, which tracks where the boat went according to the global position satellite. The track on the GPS data that you will see actually shows that the marker 15, the one where the accident happened, is not exactly where it is in the real world.

[00:28:25]On the GPS device in Mr. Filipino's vote, the marker is many feet away, up to 15 feet away from where it really is on the planet Earth.

[00:28:37]And so the track that you will see if you look at the track, it would appear that Mr. Pino's boat, the the Robalo never actually elided with the marker, but we know it did.

[00:28:52]And that's not the product of some intentional mistake by anybody, but the the marker on the GPS, Mr. Penino's Rabbalo, is not exactly where it is on the planet Earth.

[00:29:06]Now, the GPS is not a witness to anything. You will hear from the people that were actually on the scene.

[00:29:14]And so I've described for you what you will hear from the people at the sandbar, the people who came to the aid of the passengers, Mr. Rodriguez, law enforcement who came to aid, and you'll hear from them.

[00:29:35]The GPS will tell us some very important things, but it won't answer the question that you will have to answer. Was Mr. Pino reckless? And I submit to you what the evidence will show is that Mr. Pino was human.

[00:29:58]He was human.

[00:30:03]And that something happened that we may never know. No one will be able to say why he was distracted in those last few seconds where 9 seconds or however many seconds it was and did not appreciate that the boat was going to allied with the marker.

[00:30:22]Had he seen it, we know he would have turned. Nobody suggesting he wanted to hit it. The state suggestion that it was speed, that's not a factor. You'll hear that there was nine full seconds. Two football fields.

[00:30:36]two football fields between the time the boat started veering towards Ocean Reef, towards Angel Fish Creek with that marker in the middle, nine full seconds.

[00:30:45]At any point in time, if Mr. Pino realized poops, we're headed towards the marker.

[00:30:51]All it would have taken was a slight turn of the wheel and none of us would be here.

[00:30:59]And the state's theory is his failure to turn the wheel should bring him into a criminal courtroom.

[00:31:09]Now, you heard the prosecutor talk about interrogatories and a civil a civil lawsuit that was filed against Mr. Pino.

[00:31:19]That is not what we are here for. You've heard the talk the prosecutor talk about accountability.

[00:31:26]This is not a case of arguments.

[00:31:40]>> So, you've heard terms of accountability that compensation is deal with, dealt with separate from here. That was what the prosecutor brought to your attention.

[00:31:53]That's not what we're here for. That's resolved totally separately.

[00:31:58]What we're here to resolve is whether the state proves that Mr. Pino that day, that time, in those nine seconds, as they would say, was acting recklessly because he was traveling on his boat, surrounded by his loved ones, wanting to go back to where they started the day to celebrate his daughter's birthday.

[00:32:21]The state will feature photographs of visuals of that day. For example, I expect they're going to show you that Mr. Pino's boat was carrying all the empty glassear and cans from the beverages, including the alcohol beverages that were consumed that day.

[00:32:44]Mr. Pino's vote. His wife will tell you she took the responsibility of gathering all the empty bottles, all the empty cans, all the trash to make sure it was disposed of properly and not left out at Elliot Key. And so when you see those bottles and you see those cans, you'll understand that Mrs. Pino and Mr. Ino were acting in a way that you would expect people to act when they've gathered together for a day of of recreating at Elliot Ke. Don't leave your trash behind.

[00:33:23]You may see very difficult pictures of the the events and of course they're going to be difficult to watch. It's going to spark emotion among all of us.

[00:33:36]But that evidence will not answer the question of whether the state is proving that Mr. Pino acted recklessly, whether he acted with culpable negligence, intentionally, knowingly, purposely, consciously indifferent to the consequences that when he was traveling at 47 miles hour in the wide open bay with one marker to go and plenty of space, whether if he looked at his speedometer and saw it was going 47 miles an hour, he he he should have said to himself, "Wow, this is really a dangerous speed." When the Rabbalo boat is built to handle even much more speed than that, all of the passengers were seated.

[00:34:19]There were the right number of life preservers on the boat.

[00:34:24]He didn't have a kill switch on. It's not required by law.

[00:34:29]And so to the extent that you'll hear evidence of other features of a boat or other safety features that can be employed, we're not here to decide policy of whether we should require safety switches, kill switches, and given that you know that in that channel there is no posted speed restrictions at all. Not then, not now.

[00:35:00]The evidence will show that the speed at which Mr. Pino was traveling was perfectly appropriate given the conditions of that day. Calm waters, no wind, no rain, no lightning, no busy boat traffic.

[00:35:40]But even so, somebody died.

[00:35:45]Even so, somebody died.

[00:35:47]Mr. Pino will have to live with that.

[00:36:02]Let me say he wasn't texting. He wasn't on the cell phone.

[00:36:06]But he was the operator of that boat.

[00:36:10]At the end of the day, it was on him. It was on him to get those girls back to Oceanry safely. That was on him.

[00:36:19]He accepted that responsibility and it was on him.

[00:36:24]But the law as it will be instructed I submit to you tells you that even when we fail as humans >> objection to argument >> even though Mr. Pino may have failed as a human to avoid this tragedy.

[00:36:41]>> Can we go aside?

[00:36:43]No argument. The evidence will show that this tragedy was not the c was not caused by reckless and culpably negligent behavior.

[00:36:55]At worst, he was human and he committed human error.

[00:37:01]Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

[00:37:04]>> Thank you so much.