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Thread: David Ray Taylor - Oregon

  1. #21
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Lane Co. judge denies new trial for death row inmate David Ray Taylor, finds no jury tampering

    By Jack Moran
    The Register-Guard

    A Lane County judge has rejected death row inmate David Ray Taylor’s request for a new trial and announced that he’s found no evidence to support an allegation that an alternate juror’s questionable behavior improperly influenced deliberations in the high-profile murder case.

    Judge Charles Zennaché issued a written ruling last week saying that he has no authority to nullify Taylor’s conviction and death sentence because attorneys for the two-time convicted killer from Eugene took too long to ask for another trial. Requests such as the one made by Taylor’s lawyers must typically be made within 55 days of the entry of judgment in a case.

    A jury in May 2014 found Taylor guilty of aggravated murder and ordered him sentenced to death in the killing of 22-year-old Eugene resident Celestino Gutierrez Jr.

    Taylor’s lawyers didn’t formally request a new trial for their client until April. This was after Zennaché had conducted an unusual investigation — at the direction of the Oregon Supreme Court — into whether an alternate juror, who apparently knew about the murder case but claimed ignorance during jury selection, had shared information with others on the panel that could have influenced the trial’s outcome.

    Zennaché concluded that the alternate, Holly Moser, had not disclosed her knowledge or opinions on the case to any of the jurors who participated in the deliberations.

    He also wrote in denying the request for a new trial that although Taylor’s attorneys didn’t know about the juror misconduct issue until well after the 55-day period had elapsed, he still “does not have discretion to allow a late filing in this case.”

    Taylor’s lawyers asserted in court documents that Moser’s behavior had deprived their client of a fair trial.

    As an alternate, Moser didn’t participate in deliberations that produced the unanimous verdicts. But she did spend about four weeks with the rest of the jury during the trial, which — as parties to the case later learned — began two months after Moser had sent her husband an email that suggested she felt Taylor “needs to die” as punishment for Gutierrez’s murder.

    Moser, who at the time worked as a Lane County Circuit Court clerk, wrote in the Feb. 14, 2014, email that she had read search warrants filed in the case. But she said in court during jury selection that she knew “really nothing” about the allegations and hadn’t formed any opinions about them.

    Moser resigned from her job at the courthouse in September, around the same time that Zennaché learned of the email’s existence.

    Based on the email’s discovery, the Oregon Supreme Court in January ordered Zennaché to lead a probe into potential juror misconduct involving Moser.

    Taylor, now 59, became the 35th member of Oregon’s death row after the seven-woman, five-man jury ordered him to be executed for masterminding a plot to rob and kill Gutierrez in August 2012.

    According to trial testimony, Taylor enlisted two much younger acquaintances to lure Gutierrez to Taylor’s home, where the victim was slain. The three suspects then used Gutierrez’s car as a getaway vehicle in a bank robbery in Mapleton. Gutierrez’s dismembered remains later were found buried in a forested area southwest of Eugene.

    One of Taylor’s accomplices, Mercedes Crabtree, is serving a lifetime prison sentence for the murder. A trial for the third suspect, A.J. Nelson, is scheduled for February.

    Taylor previously served 27 years in prison for the slaying of a Eugene gas station attendant in 1977. He was granted parole in 2004 and released from post-prison supervision three years later.

    http://registerguard.com/rg/news/loc...-tampering.csp

  2. #22
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    Trial date nears for third suspect in horrific Eugene murder case

    By Jack Moran
    The Register-Guard

    Nearly two years after a Lane County jury sent David Ray Taylor to Oregon’s death row for the 2012 slaying of Eugene resident Celestino Gutierrez Jr., a trial date is nearing for another suspect in the case.

    Pretrial hearings began Wednesday in Lane County Circuit Court for Army veteran A.J. Scott Nelson of Portland, who faces a potential death sentence if he is found guilty of aggravated murder. Jury selection is scheduled to begin March 29.

    Nelson was just 22 when he allegedly helped Taylor, a Eugene resident who was 56 at the time, carry out a plan to kill Gutierrez in order to steal the victim’s car for use in a bank robbery.

    A third person charged in the case, then-18-year-old Mercedes Crabtree of Portland, is serving a lifetime prison sentence for her role in the plot.

    Nelson has spent the past 3½ years in the Lane County Jail, in part because he didn’t begin working with his current defense team until mid-2014 — after telling a judge that he didn’t trust the original set of lawyers appointed to represent him.

    One pretrial issue to be worked out surrounds the Lane County Sheriff’s Office’s practice of audio-recording Nelson’s telephone calls and social visits at the jail, and sharing those recordings with police.

    Defense attorney Laurie Bender on Wednesday argued that the jail’s practice is illegal and that recording Nelson’s conversations for potential investigative purposes without first obtaining a warrant amounts to “a suspicionless search.”

    Bender asserted her client is one of a “select few” jail inmates subject to close scrutiny of their phone calls and visits.

    Bender asked Lane County Circuit Judge Debra Vogt to prohibit prosecutors from presenting any evidence at trial that investigators may have gleaned through their review of the recordings.

    Prosecutor David Schwartz, however, maintained that it is proper and legal for authorities to record inmate phone calls and visits.

    Sheriff’s Lt. Steve French testified Wednesday that the jail records most inmate calls and visits “for the safety and security of the facility,” and that inmates are well aware of that fact.

    Vogt is expected to make a number of rulings in the coming weeks, several in response to defense motions urging her to prohibit prosecutors from seeking the death penalty if Nelson is convicted of aggravated murder.

    Nelson’s attorneys have asked Vogt to exclude the death penalty as a potential sentencing option because of injuries Nelson suffered in 2009 when his squad’s armored vehicle was destroyed by a roadside bomb during a combat tour in Afghanistan.

    The lawyers also have argued in court documents that Vogt should declare the death penalty unconstitutional and bar it in their client’s case because of “evolving standards of decency.”

    Additionally, Nelson’s lawyers want the judge to allow them to question prospective jurors one by one — outside the presence of others in the jury pool — regarding their views on capital punishment and race, in an attempt to identify any racial bias that may exist among the people who will decide the fate of Nelson, who is black.

    Evidence presented during Taylor’s trial indicated Nelson played a central role in Gutierrez’s murder and dismemberment.

    Crabtree, whose plea deal with prosecutors requires her to serve as a state witness against both Taylor and Nelson, testified at Taylor’s trial that Nelson — at Taylor’s direction — bound Gutierrez with electrical wire and a belt, pushed a crossbow bolt through one of the victim’s ears and choked him.

    After mocking Nelson for failing to kill Gutierrez swiftly, Taylor wrapped a metal chain around Gutierrez’s neck and pulled on it until the victim stopped breathing, Crabtree told the jury.

    Crabtree said Nelson and Taylor then dismembered Gutierrez’s body in a bathtub in Taylor’s home off Highway 99 in Eugene. Nelson went into a brief seizure during the process and came out of it confused about what he saw in the bathroom, Crabtree testified.

    http://registerguard.com/rg/news/loc...-case.html.csp

  3. #23
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    In today's orders, the United States Supreme Court DENIED Taylor's certiorari petition.

    Lower Ct: Supreme Court of Oregon
    Case Numbers: (S062310)
    Decision Date: February 7, 2019
    Rehearing Denied: May 2, 2019

    https://www.supremecourt.gov/search....c/19-5493.html

  4. #24
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