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Attorneys Request Review Ahead of Leonard Taylor’s Execution | Missouri News | St. Louis

attorneylegalcounsel99 — Fri, 03 Feb 2023 18:22:26 +0000

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Courtesy of MacArthur Justice Center

Leonard “Raheem” Taylor, pictured here in an interview with MacArthur Justice Center.

A Missouri death row inmate set to be executed on Tuesday has a credible case of innocence that needs to be investigated, say multiple organizations for wrongfully convicted individuals in a recent court filing.

The Midwest Innocence Project, Innocence Project and the nonprofit law firm of Phillips Black requested Governor Mike Parson appoint an independent board of inquiry to evaluate Leonard “Raheem” Taylor’s innocence late yesterday.

Taylor, who was convicted in 2008 for the 2004 murders of his girlfriend Angela Rowe and her three children, says he was 1,800 miles away at the time.

No court has ever been presented with Taylor’s innocence claim, let alone a fully investigated one, Midwest Innocence Project Executive Director Tricia Rojo Bushnell tells the RFT. She says it would be wholly unjust for Taylor to be executed without a thorough investigation into his case.

“We certainly believe based on the evidence that Mr. Taylor is innocent,” Bushnell says. “But those determinations should be made by a fact finder.”

Officers found Rowe and her children’s bodies at their home in Jennings on December 3, 2004. Rowe and her 10-year-old daughter Alexus Conley, 6-year-old daughter AcQreya Conley and 5-year-old son Tyrese Conley were shot to death.

As Rowe’s live-in boyfriend, and with a criminal record for drug- and fraud-related crimes, Taylor immediately became a suspect. He was arrested four days later in Kentucky.

Since the original trial, new evidence has surfaced supporting Taylor’s claim that was out of state at the time of the murders. Taylor says he was in California visiting his daughter at the time of Rowe and her children’s deaths.

The key to Taylor’s claim of innocence is the Rowe family’s time of death. In a pretrial deposition, medical examiner Dr. Phillip Burch said Rowe and her children were killed approximately two to three days before their bodies were found.

Yet during trial, Burch “drastically changed his opinion” regarding time of death, Taylor’s lawyers say, from two to three days before the bodies were found to two to three weeks earlier, when Taylor would have still been in town.

In a recent court filing, Taylor’s lawyers said Taylor boarded a flight to California eight days before the Rowe family’s bodies were found — making it impossible for him to have committed the crime within the medical examiner’s time frame. Airport surveillance footage confirmed Taylor’s alibi.

In a continuation of its barbaric killing spree, #Missouri is 14 days away from executing Leonard “Raheem” Taylor, who was wrongfully convicted of murder despite an airtight alibi that put him 1800 miles from the victims at the time of the crime. pic.twitter.com/O9Zk1K3kdX

— MacArthur Justice Center (@MacArthrJustice) January 25, 2023 None of Taylor’s attorneys retained a forensic pathologist to review the medical examiner’s switched conclusion until one week ago. In an affidavit this week, Dr. Jane Turner, a former assistant in the St. Louis medical examiner’s office, said Rowe and her children could have been dead for days and not weeks.

Witness accounts also suggest the murders didn’t occur until after Taylor would have been thousands of miles away. Multiple witnesses, including the victims’ relatives and a neighbor, testified they saw Rowe and her children during the time frame of when the prosecution claimed they were dead.

Also, Taylor’s daughter, Deja Taylor, who was 13 at the time of Taylor’s supposed murders, said in a sworn declaration last November that Taylor had called Rowe in St. Louis and put his daughter on the phone to have a conversation with Rowe and one of Rowe’s children.

Taylor’s advocates have also cast doubt on a statement Taylor’s brother made to police. Perry Taylor told police his brother had confessed to him that he committed the murders.

But Perry Taylor later recanted this statement. He said he felt coerced by police to implicate his brother: that officers had repeatedly threatened him with physical harm and prison time and threatened his mother. Perry Taylor died in 2015.

Parson is not legally obligated to respond to the request for a board of inquiry, according to Bushnell. Doing so would not require Parson to accept Taylor’s possible innocence.

“What we’re asking him is to recognize that a system requires a full investigation and a fair assessment of all the facts,” Bushnell says.

A Missouri governor has not appointed a board of inquiry since 2017, when former Governor Eric Greitens stayed Marcellus Williams’ execution just hours before he was set to be executed. Williams still remains on death row, however. The panel has since reviewed Williams’ case and made recommendations to Parson. The governor has yet to act on those recommendations.

The request for a board of inquiry could be Taylor’s last shot at life. St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell said Monday his office would not file a motion to vacate Taylor’s sentence. “The facts are not there to support a credible case of innocence,” Bell said in a statement. And on Thursday the Missouri Supreme Court overruled a motion to delay Taylor’s execution so experts could have more time to examine the case.

Even after the slim chance the board recommends an overturn of Taylor’s conviction and the governor complies, Taylor would still remain in jail for an unrelated rape case.

Michelle Smith, co-director of Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty, told the RFT in an interview Thursday that Taylor is optimistic — but she’s not.

Taylor’s execution is on track to be the third execution in Missouri in three months. Both of the recently executed death row inmates — Amber McLaughlin and Kevin Johnson — fought till their last moments to delay their executions with no success.

“I hope the people who are trying to save him succeed,” Smith says. “But I understand that this country kills innocent people.”

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State lawmakers ask St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office about backlog of cases

attorneylegalcounsel99 — Tue, 31 Jan 2023 02:42:40 +0000

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – State representatives zeroed in on the St. Louis Circuit attorney’s Office Monday, where thousands of cases have yet to be prosecuted.

The legislation up for discussion is to decide when the governor should be allowed to appoint a special prosecutor. Originally, the bill heard in a House Crime Prevention and Public Safety Committee last Thursday targeted the St. Louis Circuit attorney’s Office. During the hearing, members discussed potential changes to determine when the governor should be allowed to appoint a special prosecutor.

No one from the St. Louis Circuit attorney’s Office was present at Thursday’s hearing, but during a second hearing Monday, representatives from Kim Gardner’s office testified in opposition.

“Our violent crime unit is being able to handle successfully, and our recent verdicts attest to that as much,” chief warrant officer for the circuit attorney’s office Chris Hinckley told the committee. “There is no reason to ask for help in that area.”

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It’s a plan by Rep. Lane Roberts (R-Joplin) to address crime. The proposal is to allow special prosecutors to be appointed by the governor for every 35 homicides per 100,000 people.

“Now, the state envisions, if I’m correct, superseding us as citizens and saying, ‘Don’t worry about who you voted for, we’re going to take over,’” Redditt Hudson, a former St. Louis police officer and diversion specialist for Gardner’s office, said. “We have a person that has been elected, with the processes in place, constitutionally and legally, to do the job.”

Roberts said some bipartisan lawmakers spoke with St. Louis Circuit attorney Kim Gardner via conference call last year to talk about the thousands of unprosecuted cases in the City of St. Louis.

“We discussed how we could go about helping the circuit attorney’s office,” Roberts said during Thursday committee hearing. “Unfortunately, the only request that she made was for money. Money is not going to do the trick.”

While testifying, Hinckley agreed with Gardner that the office needs more money to increase pay. He said employees are constantly leaving to go work for the St. Louis County Prosecutor’s Office instead.

“I think one of the things that would be very helpful is the ability to increase our salary,” Hinckley said. “People leave our office to go to Mr. Bell’s office, and remember, everyone leaves for money. It’s a significant increase.”

Hinckley said the starting salary at the Circuit attorney’s office is around $50,000.

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Under House Bill 301, the special prosecutor would receive “exclusive” jurisdiction to prosecute first- and second-degree murders, first- and second-degree assaults, first- and second-degree robberies, and vehicle hijacking. The special prosecutor would be able to hire up to 15 assistant special prosecuting attorneys and up to 15 staff members.

Rep. Bill Hardwick (R-Waynesville) asked Hinckley about the backlog of cases. Hinckley said the office has a backlog of 3,500 cases, but none of them are violent crime cases.

Hinckley also called out the state for the lack of gun laws.

“You throw guns all over the place, and then you ask us why crime has increased? And you try to connect it to the prosecutor?” Hinckley said. “The prosecutor who is doing the best she can?”

Jane Dueker, who represents the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, said the agency has a list with more than 4,000 cases that are awaiting a decision from the circuit attorney, some of them violent crimes, on whether to file criminal charges.

“The bill seems to assume that the backlog is a backlog of violent crimes,” Hinckley said. “From the state, with the police and prosecutors, the violent crimes will never and were not ever delayed in review or issuance.”

Some members of the committee stressed their frustration with the fact the chairman held a second hearing, but Gardner did not show up.

“I will say, and I would imagine many of my committee members, are extremely disappointed that she failed to appear today, but I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that she failed to do her job,” Rep. Alex Riley (R-Springfield) said. “That seems to be her M.O.”

He said of the 3,500 cases, 50% are drug-related, and the remaining cases are misdemeanors or property damage.

A spokesperson for the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office, who oversees the City of Kansas City, said the office does not have a backlog of cases.

The St. Louis County Prosecuting attorney’s office could not provide the number of backlogged cases Monday, but said in a statement, “There is a significant backlog of applications for charges that we are addressing with the resources available.”

Other members on the committee said Gardner’s office should look at this as help, instead of taking away authority.

“To me, it seems like assistance to you guys and not more of hurting you guys,” Rep. Justin Hicks (R-Lake St. Louis) said. “It allows you to prosecute more cases.”

The Missouri Chamber of Commerce testified to the committee last week, saying with Missouri in the top 10 in the nation for violent crime, it’s an issue for economic competitiveness.

“From the business community’s perspective, crime is indeed an economic issue,” said Kara Corches, vice president of governmental affairs with the Missouri Chamber of Commerce. “Other issues that keep business leaders up at night, public safety is a top concern, and I think that says a whole lot. This isn’t just a St. Louis or Kansas City issue. This is a rural issue; this is an urban issue, and this is a suburban issue.”

St. Louis Police Chief Robert Tracy was at the Missouri Capitol last Wednesday to testify against the state having control over the police department. He told lawmakers he had yet to meet with Gardner, but would be sitting down with her soon.

“I think it’s only fair that I sit down with her to at least have a conversation before commenting about that’s happening,” Tracy said. “What she wants to do or not do.”

The circuit attorney’s office sent out a statement Thursday afternoon after the first committee hearing saying the bill will not improve violent crime.

HB301 is a political gesture based entirely on unfounded premises. The notion that anything presented in the bill will improve our violent crime situation is ridiculous. It defies logic to think the creation of a duplicative department that’s totally devoid of the relationships, institutional knowledge, criminal justice partnerships, and experience required to prosecute these complex cases would do anything to curb crime.

Addressing the causes of violent crime is an urgent priority, and should be a focus for our entire region. The Circuit attorney’s Office welcomes the opportunity to work with legislators with legitimate proposals to address it.

St. Louis Circuit attorney’s Office

Other pieces of this crime package include criminalizing those under 17 if found carrying a firearm in public unsupervised, and helping those being released from prison to get back on their feet by offering them a photo identification card and offering Medicaid services for six months after their release.

The bill has not been voted out of committee yet. Another public hearing on the legislation has been set for Monday at noon.

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