A jury found Michael Paul Robertson guilty of four charges, including attempted second-degree murder and attempted felony first-degree murder, in a 2010 attack on a Miami-Dade Police detective.
He threw a cinder block off a second-story building and hit Det. Carlos Castillo on the head following a traffic stop in Liberty City, and Robertson then took Castillo's car and ran him over, prosecutors said.
Robertson, 36, was also found guilty of burglary with an assault or battery, and carjacking on Friday. Minutes later, the judge handed Robertson to three life sentences plus 30 years in prison, with one of those life sentences coming with no possibility of parole.
During his trial Robertson claimed he was being framed and argued fingerprints collected from Castillo's Dodge Charger were planted.
Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Ellen Sue Venzer told him, however, that no one planted his fingerprints in the car.
She told Robertson that his actions were cruel and cowardly.
“As you dropped that block, as you ran over him, didn’t it occur to you that he, like you, was a father, a husband, a son?" Venzer said. "Clearly it mattered not to you. You were indifferent to him and the effect that your actions had on him and his family.”
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Castillo said that after the attack, his family was told that he wasn't going to survive, and to start making funeral arrangements.
But he pulled through, and testified against Robertson. When the defendant took the stand, he claimed that he wasn't involved in the attack on Castillo.
"He was pulling straws to make up a story," Castillo said.
Jurors deliberated for nine hours over two days before reaching their verdict.
After the sentencing, Castillo's eyes teared up in court.
"This guy is locked up for a long time. I feel the community of Miami-Dade is now safer, because if this person did this to me, that I did not even know, I can only imagine what he would do to any stranger or anybody else that upset him," he told reporters outside the courthouse. "So I thank God that he is in a place where he belongs and cannot harm anyone else.
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