BARTOW, Florida (Court TV) -- Warned by the judge that tears could trigger a mistrial, a mother was stoic in front of a Florida jury Tuesday as she relived the day she discovered the bloodied bodies of her children.
Nicoletta Dosso was the first person to come upon the bloody crime scene where her children, Frank Dosso, 35, and Diane Patisso, 28, were shot to death.
In the same office where her son lay dead in a pool of blood from gunshot wounds to the head, Nicoletta Dosso also discovered her daughter's husband, George Patisso, 26, slumped against the body of 68-year-old George Gonsalves, her husband's business partner.
Dressed from head to toe in black, the grieving mother had barely taken her seat in the witness box Tuesday before she began stifling sobs while family members and friends sat red-eyed in the gallery holding tissue boxes.
The emotional display prompted a swift response from lawyers representing the defendant, Nelson Serrano, who faces the death penalty if convicted of four counts of first-degree murder.
"Mrs. Dosso's role in this case is more emotional than any witness identification situation I can imagine," defense lawyer Robert Norgard told the court after the jury was quickly rushed out of the room. "If she breaks down in front of the jury, we will ask for a mistrial."
Fears of juror bias
Circuit Judge Susan Roberts agreed that an emotional display would unfairly bias the jurors against the defendant, and issued a stern warning to the prosecutor and, indirectly, to the witness and her family.
"If she gets emotional, I will grant a motion for a mistrial," Roberts said, eliciting emphatic headshakes from Dosso's friends and family. "If [the prosecutor] wants to put her on the stand with that in mind, he may do so."
In a compromise, both sides agreed to let the witness give her testimony outside the presence of the jury and then play a video of the testimony for the jury if it was deemed "unemotional" enough.
As a result, the Sicilian-born mother of three offered a sanitized version of the events that took place on December 3, 1997.
