Greg Taylor took the stand Tuesday and, as best he could, replayed a drug-induced jaunt into unfamiliar streets of Southeast Raleigh nearly two decades ago.
Speaking slowly and carefully, Taylor tried to explain decisions he made as a crack cocaine addict on Sept.25, 1991. The following morning, police found the body of Jacquetta Thomas, a prostitute who was beaten and dumped in a secluded cul-de-sac in Southeast Raleigh. Within hours, Taylor was charged with murder.
Raleigh police targeted Taylor because his abandoned truck was found about 100 yards from Thomas' body. His lawyers say he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and that police didn't consider other suspects.
On Tuesday, Taylor's voice quaked when he described his frustration over the hours of interrogation he faced. Taylor was told 68 lies by detectives who insisted that he was guilty, Taylor's lawyers said.
"I felt trapped," Taylor said. "I had the truth on my side, but they wouldn't listen. They kept coming at me with all these tricks and lies. I knew they were lying, but I couldn't do anything."
A Wake County jury convicted Taylor in 1993 of killing Thomas, and he has exhausted the usual routes of appeal. This week, Taylor has the chance to undo the jury's decision, as his case is heard before a panel of three Superior Court judges convened after the N.C. Innocence Inquiry Commission recommended further review. The commission, the first of its kind in the United States, voted unanimously in September that his claim of innocence warranted further review. It is Taylor's last chance for exoneration.
"This is literally his life that hangs in the balance," said Joseph B. CheshireV, one of Taylor's attorneys.
Tension pressed on everyone in the courtroom Tuesday. Cheshire, a veteran criminal defense attorney, paced before opening arguments and later confessed he was nervous.
Taylor and his team of lawyers have the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that police, prosecutors and a jury of strangers were mistaken and that Taylor is an innocent man. Wake County prosecutors are trying to keep him in prison.
If it weren't for the commission established nearly four years ago, Taylor would still be hopeless in prison, his only chance of freedom coming through an extension of mercy from the parole board.
The proceeding moved forward Tuesday much like a trial, with Taylor on the stand and defense lawyer and prosecutors grilling him.
Taylor wore a suit and tie, and glasses that swallowed his face. He answered his attorney with a "sir" after each response.
Tom Ford, the prosecutor who persuaded a jury to send Taylor to prison, sat not eight feet away Tuesday, barely looking as Taylor answered Cheshire's questions. Ford's boss, Colon Willoughby, the Wake County district attorney, thumbed through a packet of evidence, glancing occasionally at notes that Ford scribbled on a notepad. Willoughby didn't say a word Tuesday.
Into the mud
Taylor and Johnny Beck, a friend who helped him buy drugs, were trolling for crack the night of Thomas' murder. They roamed the streets of Raleigh. A wrong turn led them down the dead-end street where Thomas' body was found. For reasons Taylor can't quite explain, he decided to take his truck off-road and turn doughnuts in the mud. That's when he got stuck and decided to ditch his truck until morning.
Ford, when he cross-examined Taylor, accused him of not telling the truth when he couldn't recall the name of a street he visited that night. Ford yelled and slammed his notebook on a table.
"Mr. Taylor, you've been thinking about this case for 19 years. You haven't bothered to look at a Raleigh street map to look and see where you could have made the right turn?" Ford asked.
Taylor said he hadn't been able to look at a map and hadn't had permission in prison to get on the Internet to look.
"Never? In all that time?" Ford pressed.
As Ford questioned his memory, Taylor admitted that some details are foggy. Ford wanted to know where Taylor had been, whom he had met and why he took his truck into the mud. The prosecutor asked Taylor whether Beck had directed him to the area where Thomas' body was found.
"I can't explain why I decided to go into the mud, why Johnny was paranoid. I have to lump that into one thing: drug abuse," Taylor said.
Taylor's hearing will resume this morning at 9:45.
