Though Herman was clear that he did not remember what happened, the sleepwalking explanation was apparently first brought up by his mother, who told detectives that her son had significant sleepwalking episodes, including one time when he rode his bike to her workplace in his sleep, according to the Miami New Times.
In 2019, a 12-person jury rejected Herman's sleepwalking explanation for the death (via Palm Beach Post). Prosecutors, grasping for an explanation for Preston's death, painted the killing as motivated by unrequited feelings — Herman, while drunk and incoherent, had curled up naked in Preston's closet the night before, and a friend of his told The Daily Beast that he believed Herman was "crushing" on Preston. Moreover, prosecutors found the sleepwalking explanation improbable. "This is skin, this is bone, this is muscle (he's stabbing)," said Assistant State Attorney Reid Scott in his closing arguments. "You're not going to sleepwalk through that."
Herman, however, still maintains that he has no memory of Preston's death. In a letter to the Miami New Times, he tried to make sense of the conflicted feelings he is still working through as he serves out a life sentence. "I believe what happened in my case could have been the culmination of tremendous stress, depression, trauma, and alcohol that essentially resulted in some unexplainable mental breakdown," he wrote. "I'm beyond sorry... Part of me feels like I deserve a life sentence ... but the other part of me knows I did not intentionally do this and I deserve a second chance in life."
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