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Miami jury recommends death penalty for man who killed wife, two stepdaughters
A Miami-Dade jury has recommended the death penalty for Alberto Sierra, 42, who pleaded guilty to suffocating his estranged wife Gladys Machado and her daughters Julia, 6, and Daniela, 3, in 2012. The judge will have the final say.
A Miami-Dade jury on Tuesday, Oct. 20, recommended the death penalty for Alberto Sierra, 42, who pleaded guilty to killing his estranged wife, Gladys Machado, 29, and her two daughters, Julia, 6, and Daniela, 3, in November 2012.
After a penalty-phase trial that lasted about four weeks, jurors deliberated for more than five hours. They voted 11-1 for death in Machado's killing, 12-0 in Julia's and 8-4 in Daniela's, CBS Miami and the Miami Herald reported.
The final decision rests with Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Marisa Tinkler Mendez, who set a hearing for Nov. 2 ahead of formal sentencing. Under a 2023 Florida law, a jury can recommend death with the votes of at least eight of its 12 members.
What happened in 2012
According to investigators, the couple argued on Nov. 10, 2012, while shopping with the girls at the Mall of the Americas on West Flagler Street, and Sierra pulled out a knife. He then drove them to the home they had shared in Miami's Flagami neighborhood, where he suffocated Machado and both girls with a plastic bag.
The bodies were found three days later in a closet, after a neighbor noticed a foul odor coming from the house. Sierra was questioned and released at first but later gave a full confession. Prosecutors said DNA evidence also linked him to the crimes.
Prosecutors said a phone call Machado received from a new romantic interest enraged Sierra. The two were married but did not live together and had no children together.
Nine felonies
In August, Sierra pleaded guilty to nine felonies: three counts of first-degree murder, three counts of kidnapping, two counts of abuse of a human body and one count of armed burglary. The penalty phase then left it to the jury to recommend either life in prison or death.
'Ice, ice cold'
Prosecutor Abbe Rifkin called the killings "deliberate," "cold" and "calculated," telling jurors: "This was ice, ice cold. Three lives, three futures. One irreversible crime."
Defense attorney Khurrum Wahid asked for life without parole, arguing that Sierra suffered a brain injury when he was hit by a car at age 12 in 1996. "This is not a normal, healthy brain," Wahid told the jury. Prosecutors countered that the doctor who testified for the defense had never treated Sierra.
Machado's son, Michael Padrino Jr., was 5 at the time and survived because he stayed home that day. Now 19, he confronted Sierra in court: "You took them. You know you did."
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