JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A man sentenced for raping and murdering an Orange Park veterinary clinic worker will get another chance to avoid the death penalty.
The retrial for Michael Renard Jackson began this week.
He was convicted on Feb. 22, 2010, and sentenced to death on July 16, 2010 for the murder of Andrea Boyer. However, an appeal to the Florida Supreme Court resulted in a reversal and the granting of a new trial.
The Florida Times-Union reports that the court, in a 5-2 decision, found that a lengthy videotape of an interrogation Clay County sheriff's detectives conducted with Jackson prejudiced the jury.
Boyer, 25, was stabbed, beaten, strangled and raped shortly after she got to work in January 2007 at the Wells Road Veterinary Medical Center in Orange Park.
Forensic evidence led authorities to Jackson, who had been released from prison 15 months earlier in a 1986 rape at knifepoint of a Jacksonville teenager.