Husband to spend life in prison for killing man he found with his wife

WEST PALM BEACH — Jurors cried when they convicted 40-year-old Robert Finney III of manslaughter, and the mother of his victim did, too. She howled in the courtroom: It was murder.

Bailiffs strong-armed Robert Anthony’s family out while they hurled insults at his killer. Over the clamor, one man’s voice stood out.

“He’ll still get life in prison,” he said.

He was right. Months after jurors rejected prosecutors’ theory that a jealous Finney stalked his wife to murder her and the 20-year-old man he found her alone with, Circuit Judge Jeffrey Gillen sentenced him to the maximum penalty anyway: life in prison for aggravated battery, 15 years for manslaughter and 15 more for shooting into an occupied vehicle.

For Subscribers: A jury convicted Robert Finney III in a 2018 fatal shooting. The victim’s family wanted more.

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Gillen’s decision Thursday came after an hour of testimony from both families. One begged for mercy, and the other for as harsh a punishment as the state allowed.

“I want him to pay for what he did,” said Anthony’s mother, Valerie Thornton-Anthony. “For what he took.”

Victim’s family asked judge to impose a life sentence

Finney shot Anthony, a Royal Palm Beach High School graduate, after he found him sitting in his car with Finney’s then-wife, Roqueria Mills, on March 10, 2018, in the parking lot of Village Place Apartments, a gated complex along Village Boulevard in West Palm Beach.

Finney shot 20-year-old Mills, too, paralyzing her for life. Attorneys offered vastly different narratives over the course of the trial to explain what led to the shooting.

In one, Finney was a doting, devoted husband, taken advantage of by his spouse and frightened into shooting her and her companion when he opened his car door to find a stranger inside. In the other, he was a jealous and insecure partner who stalked his wife and executed the man he found her with, fabricating the story of self-defense years later to cover his tracks.

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At the end of each version was the death of Anthony, who had met Mills just one night earlier while celebrating his 20^th birthday and spent hours talking to her in the passenger seat of Finney’s car. He was 6-foot-5 and a jokester, his mother said. He loved to play basketball and was always first to the table for Sunday dinners with his family.

He could have walked away with his life, she said, had Finney chosen to speak instead of shoot. Anthony’s face beamed up at the judge from the custom-made jersey his mother wore Thursday, his name printed across her shoulders.

Jury didn’t believe Robert Finney intentionally killed Robert Anthony

Finney’s family presented the judge with their own photos chronicling Finney’s life. It was an upstanding one, they said. He grew up in Belle Glade and won the state football championship as a member of the Glades Central High School’s football team. He pursued undergraduate and graduate degrees in criminal justice, had no prior criminal history and was involved in a church where his father is a deacon.

Assistant Public Defender Stephen Arbuzow spoke last in Finney’s defense. The jury hadn’t convicted Finney a murderer, he said, and he shouldn’t be punished like one, either.

The lightest permissible sentence Gillen could offer was about 16 years in prison, according to Florida’s criminal punishment score sheet. Arbuzow recommended 25 years to account for a state statute that enhances penalties for crimes committed with a gun, which Finney was licensed to carry at the time of the shooting.

Mills, Anthony’s family and the prosecutor wanted more. Assistant State Attorney Francine Edwards recommended Gillen sentence Finney to life in prison, in addition to two 15-year sentences to be served consecutively.

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Gillen listened to each argument, nodding to himself occasionally.

Mills, now 25, testified over Zoom from a hospital bed, where she said she’s undergone more than 25 surgeries since the shooting. She’s in and out of there constantly, battling infections she said will one day kill her. Her son can’t sit on her lap anymore without causing her pain.

“While he may be incarcerated, he will never experience the type of pain and trauma which we have,” Mills said. Finney’s aunt listened from the gallery, her lips pressed together tightly.

Finney robbed Anthony of his life and condemned hers to the confines of a wheelchair, Mills said — he deserved to spend the rest of his in prison for it. Gillen agreed. He passed the sentence exactly as Edwards asked him to.

The reaction in the courtroom was quieter this time than when he announced the verdict in November. Finney’s family sat motionless, and Anthony’s did, too. His mother began to cry. It wasn’t the verdict they wanted, the family said in the hallway after, but it was the ending they needed.

Hannah Phillips is a journalist covering public safety and criminal justice at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at [email protected].

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Husband who killed man, paralyzed wife sentenced to life in prison