The Utah Supreme Court recently upheld the death penalty conviction of child murderer John Albert Taylor, deciding unanimously that Taylor knew what he was doing when he waived a jury trial.
Taylor had said that his trial attorneys, Martin Gravis and Don Redd, had not adequately represented him and he was unaware of the ramifications of having 2nd District Judge David Roth hear the case instead of a jury.Roth sentenced Taylor to die in 1989 for the murder of 11-year-old Charla King, who was raped and strangled with a telephone cord.
Her body was found by her mother in the bedroom of the family's Washington Terrace apartment. Taylor was staying with his sister in the apartment building at the time of the murder.
Taylor's attorneys defended him thoroughly and had good reasons to advise him to avoid a jury trial given the nature of his crime, the five justices found.
"A bad outcome alone does not permit an inference of deficient performance," Justice Christine Durham wrote in the opinion released late Monday.
"Taylor had very little going for him in the penalty phase, and the determination that his chances were better with a judge than a jury was perfectly plausible."
Edward Brass, Taylor's attorney for the past two years, said he will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
"We'll pursue it as far as we can," Brass said. "In any case where there's a death penalty involved, that's certainly our duty."
Taylor argued that his lawyers should have investigated the crime more thoroughly and done more to marshal mitigating circumstances. He also said they should have "scientifically surveyed" the public's feelings about him and the crime before he waived a jury trial.
"Particularly in a case such as this, counsel did not need to conduct a scientific poll to reasonably gauge the community attitude regarding a case in which a young girl was sexually abused and strangled," Durham wrote.
The court said Redd and Gravis investigated Taylor's claims that another suspect committed the crime and that Taylor's suggested mitigating circumstances might have done Taylor more harm than good.
For example, a psychological evaluation of Taylor at age 17 when he was in a sex offender program in Florida "portrayed him as a remorseless pedophile" and a "danger to society," the appeals court said.
An aunt and uncle who had not seen Taylor for 30 years and testified that he had been abused as a child were the best witnesses available, since his parents were reluctant to defend him and one sister testified that he had raped her three times when she was a child.
Another sister testified he had begun "having problems" with little girls when he was about 14 or 15, the justices noted.
They also rejected an argument that Taylor's first lawyer had a conflict of interest due to a past professional association with then-Weber County Attorney Reed Richards, whose office prosecuted the case.