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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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No new hearing on condemned Missouri man’s innocence claim

attorneylegalcounsel99 — Tue, 31 Jan 2023 18:37:34 +0000

ST. LOUIS (AP) — The attorney for a Missouri man facing lethal injection next week said Tuesday that he will ask the state Supreme Court to postpone the execution by three or four months to allow more time to investigate his innocence claim.

Leonard Taylor, 58, faces execution Feb. 7 for the deaths of his girlfriend and her three children in suburban St. Louis in 2004. attorney Kent Gipson had asked St. Louis County Prosecuting attorney Wesley Bell to request a hearing on Taylor’s claim that he was out of state when the killings occurred. A relatively new provision in Missouri law allows a prosecutor to seek a hearing before a judge if evidence of a wrongful conviction emerges.

But Bell said Monday that he wouldn’t file such a motion, saying in a statement that “the facts are not there to support a credible case of innocence.” Bell said he would support a stay of execution “so his counsel may further investigate the time that the victims died.”

Gipson said he would ask the Missouri Supreme Court to postpone the execution date by 90 to 120 days so that experts can seek to determine how long the victims were dead before their bodies were found — a question at the heart of the case.

Unless the court intervenes, Missouri risks executing a potentially innocent man, Gipson said.

“I think any fair-minded person that looks at all the evidence we have now would have serious doubts about whether he’s guilty, and that’s all we’re really asking for — to be able to be given an opportunity in front of a judge,” Gipson said.

Taylor had an extensive criminal record and was the live-in boyfriend of Angela Rowe. Her relatives had not heard from her for several days and asked police to go to her home in Jennings, Missouri. On Dec. 3, 2004, officers found the bodies of Rowe, her 10-year-old daughter Alexus Conley, 6-year-old daughter AcQreya Conley, and 5-year-old son Tyrese Conley.

All four had been shot to death. Taylor was arrested days later in Kentucky.

What remains unknown is precisely when the victims were killed. That’s key to Taylor’s innocence claim since he boarded a flight to California on Nov. 26, 2004 — eight days before the discovery of the bodies.

Gipson said authorities first believed the killings happened only a few days before the bodies were found, at the time when Taylor was in California. But at Taylor’s trial, medical examiner Phillip Burch said the killings could have happened two or three weeks before the discovery of the bodies.

“Several of (Rowe’s) family members, and a neighbor who had no reason to lie at all, saw her alive after Leonard left town,” Gipson said.

Meanwhile, Taylor’s adult daughter, Deja Taylor, claimed in a recent court filing that she and her father called Angela Rowe during his visit to California. Deja Taylor said she spoke with Rowe and one of the children. The court filing said Deja Taylor’s mother and sister corroborated her story.

The execution would be the third in Missouri in three months, all involving cases out of St. Louis County. Kevin Johnson was executed in November for killing a police officer in 2005. Amber McLaughlin was put to death Jan. 3 for killing a woman in 2003. It was believed to be the first execution of a transgender woman in the U.S.

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