Clay man sentenced to life in prison for 2007 rape, murder of 25-year-old

GREEN COVE SPRINGS, Fla. — A Clay County man who was on death row for raping and murdering a 25-year-old, will now instead serve life in prison.

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A judge sentenced Michael Renard Jackson Monday after he was granted a retrial. A jury found him guilty of raping and murdering Andrea Boyer in 2007.

“It is well past time to end this,” said Dr. Michael Harris in her victim impact statement. She was Boyer’s boss at Orange Park Animal Clinic. “16 years later — I think about her almost every day, and none of us who worked with Andrea will ever be the same people we were on January 22, 2007.”

Boyer was a tech at the clinic, and now her niece is following in those same footsteps. Kayli Latner is studying to be a tech. She’s 23-years-old now but was just 7 when her aunt was murdered.

“She’ll live on in our hearts and in me. But we want her here. She deserved to be here with us — safe and living,” she told the courtroom Monday. “All we ever wanted is to see and hear — especially my grandfather — to know that the man who took his daughter, my aunt, my mother, and aunt’s sister from this world — be held accountable for what he has done.”

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Jackson was originally convicted and sentenced to death in 2010, but he was granted a re-trial two years later after the supreme court ruled that a videotaped interrogation tainted the jury.

In February, a jury found him guilty a second time, but did not recommend the death penalty.

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