Sentencing postponed a third time for ex-MLB pitcher convicted in Placer shooting
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- A sentencing was postponed for retired Major League Baseball pitcher Daniel Serafini.
- Serafini was convicted of shooting his wife’s parents at the Lake Tahoe-area home.
- Sefarini faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole.
A Placer County sentencing hearing was postponed again on Friday for Daniel Serafini, a former Major League Baseball pitcher convicted of murder in the shooting of his wife’s parents in their Lake Tahoe-area home.
The retired MLB player, who faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole, had been scheduled to be sentenced next Friday. Placer Superior Court Judge Garen J. Horst determined that wasn’t going to happen with Serafini’s testimony continuing next week to support his motion for a new trial.
The judge scheduled Serafini’s sentencing hearing to be held Feb. 27 in the Auburn historic courthouse. Friday’s postponement was the third time Horst has reluctantly rescheduled Serafini’s sentencing.
Sentencing postponed three times
He initially was scheduled to be sentenced in August, when Serafini fired his trial attorneys, David Dratman and David Fischer. Serafini later hired attorney Barry Zimmerman to help him seek a new trial.
A jury in July found Serafini guilty of first-degree murder and attempted murder for the shooting that killed his father-in-law Gary Spohr, 70, and severely wounded his mother-in-law, Wendy Wood, 68, at their home. The jury also found Serafini guilty of first-degree burglary for the break-in at the couple’s West Lake Boulevard home.
Spohr died after being shot once in the head during the burglary at the couple’s Homewood residence on the west shore of Lake Tahoe, the victims’ family has said. Wood suffered two gunshot wounds to the head but regained consciousness and called authorities for help. Wood received extensive rehabilitation but died a year after the shooting.
Security camera video captured a masked intruder on June 5, 2021, enter the couple’s home during daylight and leave hours later after sunset. The couple was shot as they watched TV in their living room.
Zimmerman has argued in court that his client received ineffective assistance from his trial attorneys, Dratman and Fischer.
Zimmerman has told the judge that Dratman and Fischer failed to call up a witness who gave investigators an alibi for Serafini on the day his wife’s parents were shot. Zimmerman also argued that the trial attorneys failed to hire experts to testify on Serafini’s behalf in the trial, and that Dratman did not provide much of a defense in his closing argument.
In his closing argument in July, Dratman told the jury the prosecution did not have any physical evidence that linked Serafini to the crime scene, noting that security camera video showed a masked intruder entering the couple’s home who appeared to be younger with a smaller and thinner body frame than the former MLB player.
Assistant Chief Deputy District Attorney Richard Miller, who prosecuted Serafini, has said in court that Serafini’s trial attorneys had a flimsy alibi from a woman who initially said she saw Serafini on the day his wife’s parents were shot but later clarified she saw Serafini on the day after the shooting.
The prosecutor also has argued that Zimmerman’s argument “sounds like he just wants to do the trial all over again.”
Convicted man continues his testimony
Serafini, who wanted to testify in his trial but was advised not to, resumed his testimony Friday in the evidentiary hearing for the judge to decide whether he should get a new trial.
The prosecutor continued to cross-examine Serafini, asking him if he knew about a kinesiologist his trial attorneys hired as an expert witness to examine evidence in the murder case. Serafini said he wasn’t aware of the work the expert did.
A kinesiologist is a specialist who studies the body’s movement using evidence-based research in anatomy, physiology and biomechanics.
Miller told Serafini the kinesiologist examined video of Serafini, including security camera video at a Nevada hotel lobby, and compared it to security camera video of the masked intruder in his in-laws’ driveway.
Reading from notes taken by Fischer, one of Serafini’s trial attorneys, Miller explained to Serafini how the kinesiologist found multiple similarities between Serafini and the masked intruder. The prosecutor said in court that Fischer wrote in his notes that the kinesiologist said he could not rule out Serafini as the masked murder suspect based on walking gait and height similarities between the two men.
Similarities found in videos
Serafini told the prosecutor he was not aware of what the kinesiologist determined until Miller told him Friday afternoon.
During the trial, the prosecutor argued that Serafini was the masked intruder who hid in the home while the couple was away and shot them hours later after they returned from an outing on the lake with Serafini’s wife and their two children. The couple’s daughter and their grandchildren had returned to their home in Reno before the shooting occurred.
Samantha Scott, a co-defendant who received a plea deal from prosecutors, testified that she drove Serafini from Nevada and dropped him off a few miles away from his in-laws’ home before he returned hours later with a gun she had seen him with earlier in the day. She told the jury Serafini threw out the gun, his clothing and other items as the two headed back to Nevada that night.
The judge scheduled Serafini, who remains in custody at the Placer County Jail, to return to court next Friday morning. Zimmerman will continue his re-direct examination of Serafini, which the attorney said could continue into the afternoon.
The defense attorney hopes to call Dratman and Fischer to testify in the evidentiary hearing. Zimmerman also plans to call Serafini’s wife, Erin Spohr, to testify in the hearing before the judge decides whether to order a new trial.
