Last week — on the state’s third attempt after a pair of mistrials — a jury determined that Robert Holton II was guilty of the ghastly murder of a woman who spurned his advances. Wednesday morning, they began deliberating on whether the former day laborer and football coach should spend the rest of his life in prison, or be sent to death row.
Holton could be the first person sentenced to death in Miami-Dade under a relatively new state law that no longer requires a unanimous jury vote. Early last year, state lawmakers, livid that convicted Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooter Nikolas Cruz only received a life sentence, altered the law to only require the jury to vote 8-4 for death.
“He beat her. He stabbed her. He strangled her and he drowned her,” Miami-Dade Assistant State Attorney Scott Warfman first told jurors at trial last week, then repeated Tuesday during the sentencing phase of the trial.
Defense attorney Tony Moss acknowledged the jury verdict during Tuesday’s closing argument, but compared Holton to the tragic Othello, a Shakespearean military commander who killed his wife in a fit of jealous rage. Moss said his client’s life should be spared.
“Those were acts of someone who totally lost it,” Moss told jurors.
He killed out of jealous rage
State prosecutors portrayed Holton, 42, as the spurned wannabe boyfriend of Kayla Gloster, a popular student he met and began dating while she was still a teen attending an all-girls high school in South Miami. They successfully argued that Holton was outraged that she had another boyfriend and seemed to be just dragging Holton along, accepting money from him each month to help with bills.
But all that ended in Gloster’s Naranja apartment in November 2013, when she was only 22 years old. That day, according to prosecutors, after a phone call, Holton drove to the apartment, had sex with Gloster, then committed a series of brutal acts that ended her life.
Prosecutors say Holton strangled her so mercilessly that blood vessels popped in her eyes. Then he set her mattress on fire, wrapped Gloster in a quilt and dragged her into the bathroom where he forced her head down the toilet and drowned her.
The Miami-Dade Medical Examiner said Gloser had severe cuts on one hand, indicating she fought a knife attack in which she was cut five times on her head and neck.
Then he left, prosecutors said, went home and fed his dog.
Someone in the neighboring apartment claimed to have heard a commotion. Blood with Holton’s DNA was found on the bedroom door, the living room wall and in the kitchen. An expert testified earlier that the odds of someone matching the blood type found to be Holton’s inside the apartment was 2.7 quadrillion to one.
He was taken into custody 11 months after the November 2013 murder and charged with first-degree murder and first-degree arson.
Convicted almost decade after first mistrial
Holton’s first trial in 2015 was cut short after jurors learned from a witness that he was wanted by police for a separate crime. His second trial last August ended after Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Marisa Tinkler-Mendez received three notes from jurors saying they were deadlocked after two days of deliberations.
At his third trial, jurors weren’t buying defense attorney Jimmy DellaFera’s claim that Holton couldn’t have left the apartment and locked the door because the only way in and out was with a fob that was still in the apartment when police arrived after Gloster was killed. He also argued that key pieces of evidence left in the apartment were ignored by police.
Jurors sent home late Tuesday afternoon are expected to begin deliberations mid-morning Wednesday.