ORLANDO, Florida — Markeith Lloyd, the man who gunned down a pregnant ex-girlfriend and then executed a police officer as she lay wounded on the pavement, has been sentenced to death for the murder of Master Sergeant Deborah Clayton. The sentence, handed down by Judge Leticia Marquez on March 3, 2022, came more than five years after Clayton was killed on National Law Enforcement Appreciation Day, a morning that plunged Orlando into a 36-day manhunt and left two law enforcement officers dead.
Lloyd, now 50, already was serving a life sentence for the December 2016 murder of Sade Dixon, 24, and her unborn son. But the jury in the Clayton case recommended death unanimously, and the judge agreed. When the sentence was read, Lloyd erupted, shouting at deputies as they dragged him from the courtroom. He had done the same thing during earlier proceedings, screaming that police had been trying to kill him since the day he was captured.
The case began on the evening of December 13, 2016, when Lloyd drove a red 1992 Buick Regal to the Pine Hills home of Sade Dixon. She had left him three days earlier after he bit her hard enough to require a tetanus shot. She moved back in with her parents, believing she would be safe. Lloyd called her phone. She stepped outside. He shot her eight times, killing her and the child she carried. When her brother ran out to help, Lloyd shot him too. He fired at the mother and another brother as they opened the front door. Then he vanished.
For 27 days, Lloyd hid in the neighborhoods where he grew up, wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying multiple weapons. His face was on every news broadcast and wanted poster in Central Florida. More than 1,400 tips came in. None led to his capture. Then, on January 9, 2017, a woman inside a Walmart on John Young Parkway recognized Lloyd in the checkout line. She walked outside and told the first officer she saw. That officer was Master Sergeant Deborah Clayton, a 17-year veteran of the Orlando Police Department, a wife, a mother, and a community organizer who had spent her career building trust between law enforcement and the city’s most distrustful neighborhoods.
Clayton entered the Walmart and ordered Lloyd to get on the ground. He ran. She followed. In the parking lot, he turned and opened fire. Both fired eight rounds. Clayton was hit four times. She fell. While she lay on the pavement, wounded and unable to fight back, Lloyd stood over her and fired the shot that killed her, a single round through her neck. He fled, shot at another officer, carjacked a civilian at gunpoint, and vanished again.
Hours later, Orange County Deputy First Class Norman Lewis, 35, a UCF graduate and former football player, was struck by a vehicle while riding his motorcycle during the manhunt. He died before noon. Two law enforcement officers dead in a single morning, three people dead in less than a month, and the man who started it all was still free.
The manhunt lasted 36 days. The reward climbed to $125,000. The U.S. Marshals added Lloyd to the nation’s 15 most wanted list. What finally led to his capture was old-fashioned police work that ended at an abandoned house in Carver Shores, the same neighborhood where Lloyd had grown up, located right around the corner from Deborah Clayton’s mother’s home. When he emerged, he was wearing body armor and carrying two handguns, one of them a Glock with a 100-round magazine. He threw the guns down, crawled toward the officers, and was arrested using the handcuffs of the woman he had killed.
He lost his left eye during the arrest. Helicopter footage showed officers appearing to kick him while he lay prone on the ground. The images would follow the case through every stage of the legal proceedings.
The case triggered a political firestorm when newly elected State Attorney Aramis Ayala, the first Black woman to hold the office in Florida history, announced she would not seek the death penalty in any case. Governor Rick Scott removed her from the Lloyd prosecution within hours, assigning the case to a pro-death penalty prosecutor from a neighboring circuit. The Florida Supreme Court upheld the governor’s action in a 5-2 decision.
At trial, Lloyd represented himself. He took the stand in both cases, arguing self-defense and insanity. He told the jury he believed police were trying to kill him, that he fired only because Clayton fired first, and that his actions were the result of brain damage and paranoid delusions. The prosecution presented surveillance footage, physical evidence, and Lloyd’s own social media posts, including one from December 12, 2016, that read, “Goals to be on America’s Most Wanted.”
The jury in the Dixon case recommended life in prison. The jury in the Clayton case recommended death. On March 19, 2022, Lloyd’s attorneys filed an appeal with the Florida Supreme Court, raising 13 claims. On November 16, 2023, the court rejected all of them, affirming the convictions and death sentence.
Lloyd now sits on Florida’s death row. He is serving a life sentence for the murder of Sade Dixon and her unborn son and a death sentence for the murder of Lieutenant Deborah Clayton. No execution date has been set. The appeals process is expected to continue for years. But for the families of the victims, the legal chapter has closed. Sade Dixon’s mother, Stephanie Dixon Daniels, said after the life sentence in her daughter’s case that she found a measure of peace in knowing her family would not be dragged through decades of appeals. “It was God’s plan,” she said. “This is going to be our new normal.”
Deborah Clayton’s husband, Seth, said little publicly after the death sentence was imposed. But Orlando Police Chief Orlando Rolan issued a statement: “Nothing can undo the heartache created by the defendant’s heinous actions. But we hope this brings solace to our community, knowing a dangerous murderer will face the highest penalty provided by law.”
The man who stole food as a teenager to feed his siblings, who sold drugs at 16 to keep the lights on, who was kidnapped and beaten as a youth, who was charged with murder at 21 and walked free, who killed a pregnant woman and her unborn child, who executed a police officer on the pavement of a Walmart parking lot, who triggered the death of a deputy in the chaos that followed, who hid for 36 days while the city of Orlando held its breath, will never be a free man again. The only question that remains is whether the state of Florida will carry out the sentence the jury recommended and the judge imposed. For now, Markeith Lloyd waits.