Reagan Tokes
Update (3:24 p.m.): Judge Serrott accepted the jury's recommendation of life without parole.
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The same jury that last week convicted 30-year-old Brian Golsby on all counts in the rape and murder of former Ohio State senior Reagan Tokes on Wednesday recommended her killer spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole. The jury voted eight to four for a death sentence, but it had to be unanimous.
Golsby's lawyers, in their closing arguments, pleaded for their jury not to execute their client due to his troubled past.
From 10tv.com:
"I beg of you, don't kill him," defense attorney Diane Menashe said.
His defense attorneys - Menashe and Kort Gatterdam - have said that Brian Golsby is the product of a failed system.
That failed system included: an abusive mother, an absent father, the fact that Golsby says he was raped at age 12 but was never given trauma-informed psychological help.'
The jury took two and a half days to reach their verdict after Judge Mark Serrott sequestered them in a downtown hotel. They agreed around 11 a.m. Wednesday morning.
Judge Serrott said, barring any further evidence, he would likely take the jury's recommendation when he officially sentences Golsby later in the day.
Golsby was convicted on kidnapping, rape, robbery, tampering with evidence, and murder charges. He confessed to abducting Tokes on February 8, 2017 after she left her shift from Bodega Bar in the Short North. She would have turned 23 the day of Golsby's original conviction.
Ohio State awarded Tokes her degree posthumously in May 2017. Last month, The Reagan Delaney Tokes Foundation established a scholarship in her name.
