Man Faces Jury Again in Case of Alleged Murder of 22-Year-Old Miami-Dade Woman
Debarylife – Robert Holton sat in front of a jury on Monday, his future in jeopardy, for the third time in less than ten years.
When jurors discovered that Holton was wanted by the police for a different offense, their first trial in 2015, in which he was accused of stabbing, strangling, starting a fire, and drowning a woman who had rejected his declarations of love over ten years before, concluded without a verdict.
In August of last year, a judge again canceled his second trial after receiving three notes from jurors indicating that, after two days of deliberations, they had reached a deadlock.
Opening arguments for Holton’s third trial, which took place on Monday, were all too familiar to prosecutors, defense lawyers, friends, and family of Kayla Gloster, who was killed in her Naranja apartment in 2013. Holton was charged with first-degree murder once more.
Lauderdale-Dade The 27-year-old Holton pursued Gloster when she was still in her teens and attended an all-girls high school in South Miami, according to testimony given by Assistant State Attorney Scott Warfman to the jury. And how Holton supposedly lost it in a jealous rage after being rejected for a few years and Gloster moving on to a new boyfriend.
He said the jury would conclude that he killed Gloster when she was just 22 years old based on blood with Holton’s DNA found on the kitchen, living room wall, and bedroom door.
He struck her. He gave her a knife. Jurors were informed by Warfman that “he drowned her and strangled her.” Years had passed since the object of his infatuation and affection rejected him.
It wasn’t quite that cut-and-dry, according to defense lawyer Jimmy DellaFera. He was going to argue, just like he had in the last trial, that there are numerous holes in the state’s case. DellaFera stated that, for example, Holton could not have left the apartment and locked the door because, when police arrived long after Gloster’s murder, the only means of entry and exit was through a fob that remained in the apartment.
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Additionally, Della Fera stated in his opening remarks that the evidence would refute the prosecution’s assertion that Gloster was murdered in her apartment’s bathroom and dragged there in a comforter, as well as the fact that police disregarded important evidence that was left in the flat.
“For 11 months, following their total command over all the evidence they hoped to obtain against Robert Holton, the police failed to arrest Holton. And for the reason that Kayla Gloster was not killed by Robert Holton, according to DellaFera.
According to state prosecutors, Holton, 42, spent an hour talking to Gloster on his smartphone because he was furious that she had a partner before going to her residence to take her life. According to the reports, Holton was employed as a flagger at the time, which is a person who holds the stop-and-go sign at road construction projects.
Both parties acknowledge that they had sex after he arrived. The stories diverge after that, though. Holton’s blood, according to the state, was discovered in the flat in five separate locations. The likelihood of someone in the flat having Holton’s blood type was 2.7 quadrillion to one, according to an expert’s prior testimony.
The prosecution claims that before killing Gloster, Holton burned her mattress, carried her into the bathroom, and pushed her head down the toilet, drowning her, all while smothering her so severely that blood vessels burst in her eyes. She was the victim of a knife assault because she had five cuts on her head and neck and had deep slashes on one hand.
Eleven months after the November 2013 murder, Holton was placed under arrest and accused of first-degree murder and first-degree arson.
Life in prison is what Holton faces. He was going to be executed at his August trial. The state chose to set a lower standard this time around.