Facts of the Crime:
Witnesses, primarily his two accomplices, testified that Andrew Lancaster kidnapped and shot Michael Taylor on April 23, 1996 in a dispute over a transmitter and other equipment for a planned microwave radio station. Taylor, 45, was a former homeless resident of Los Angeles and an African-American activist who had hosted “Community Forum” on KPFK, a left-leaning FM station. After leaving KPFK, he had planned to start an unlicensed radio station with two friends, Robert Marston and Tyrone Floyd, the pair testified.
Marston and Floyd explained that Lancaster, who also went by Hodari Lumumba but took the name Mustafa Ibn Talib after converting to Islam while in custody, was an associate of Mzee Shambulia, an activist who supposedly had offered to help fund the “people’s radio station.”
Marston said he and Taylor became concerned that Shambulia really did not want to work with them, and also that he wanted to start a commercial operation rather than a donor-financed, independent station, so they decided not to deliver any equipment to Shambulia’s group. When Shambulia sent Marston a $220 money order in April 1996, Marston returned it.
Taylor, Marston testified, told him that Lancaster had called him and threatened that “things would get rough” if they did not produce the equipment. A couple of days later, Taylor disappeared; a witness who heard gunshots called police, who found his body.
Lancaster was sentenced to death on September 16, 1998 in Los Angeles County.
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