A former Miami-Dade firefighter convicted in 2022 of molesting a child is back in front of a Miami jury this week, after an appeals court threw out his sex-abuse convictions because his own pastor testified against him at the original trial. Fernando Castano, 52, is once again facing charges that he sexually abused a minor, with jurors now asked to reach a new verdict on counts that once carried a mandatory life sentence.
Castano was originally convicted of sexual battery, lewd and lascivious molestation of a child, lewd and lascivious exhibition, and charges tied to pulling a gun on his then-wife, according to the Miami Herald. Circuit Judge Ellen Sue Venzer sentenced him to life in prison following that verdict, and she is now presiding over his retrial, per the same report. The allegations against Castano first surfaced after his arrest in connection with a 2021 domestic dispute, the Herald notes.
Pastor’s Testimony Undoes the Original Verdict
At the first trial, Castano’s pastor testified that he had told her he had sexual encounters with an underage victim, and that she had also spoken with his then-wife about it, the Herald reports. Florida’s Third District Court of Appeal later found that testimony should never have reached the jury, ruling in May 2025 that Judge Venzer incorrectly allowed it and that the error was not harmless — meaning the pastor’s account could have swayed jurors toward conviction, according to the Herald’s account of the ruling.
The three-judge appellate panel — Alexander Bokor, Kansas Gooden, and Norma Lindsey — cited prosecutors’ introduction of the pastor’s testimony as the basis for reversing Castano’s sex-abuse convictions, while leaving his separate domestic violence convictions for assault, battery, and robbery intact, according to the FindLaw Caselaw record of the decision. Gooden, quoted by the Herald, said the relationship between a member of the clergy and a parishioner is sacred. Under Florida law, conversations with clergy are often privileged and cannot be introduced as evidence against a defendant, a principle rooted in Florida Statute § 90.505, which — per Online Sunshine’s text of the law — carves out an exception even to the state’s mandatory child-abuse reporting requirements. Legal analysis from the EvidenceProf Blog noted the ruling also clarified that the privilege extends to pastoral counseling even when family members are present, so long as it serves spiritual reconciliation — a question Florida courts had not previously settled…