BARTOW – A 12-member jury recommended this week that Andre Maurice Warner, 31, should be sentenced to death for the murder of 27-year-old Adam Hilarie in August 2016 during a home-invasion robbery.
“We the jury unanimously find that Andre Maurice Warner should be sentenced to death,” Circuit Court Judge Jalal Harb read in court on Tuesday.
Investigators and prosecutors say Hilarie met co-defendant Hailey Bustos, now 22, through the PlentyofFish.com dating website, and went out with him, intending to fleece him for money. She was 18 at the time and had been told by a friend about meeting up with men through the dating app and then getting them to give her money, she testified at Warner’s murder trial last year.
reporter: defense team bob norgard and cheney mason were relentless in their cross-examinations of witnesses, starting with the investigators who gathered evidence. 12 bullet casings, for instance, told them nothing about who loaded the guns. with respect to the casings, no fingerprint evidence linking those casings to mr. serrano? that s right. reporter: no serrano fingerprints found anywhere around the crime scene. not a single fingerprint was linked to mr. serrano in that building, isn t that true? none of the fingerprints were linked to him. reporter: the dusty shoeprint seemed to be serrano s shoe size. can you tell me how many shoes there are that match no, i cannot. 2 million, 10 million, 100 million? do you know? i really don t know. this is all part of a circumstantial case. you have to believe each link in the chain to get him to make that footprint in the chair. what is the theory here? there are three men in there, 200-plus pounds each. excuse me