A former FBI agent testified today that Raleigh police and prosecutors strayed from sound investigatory strategy when they immediately blamed Greg Taylor for murder in 1991.
"There's tunnel vision and a rush to judgment in this case," said Gregg McCrary, a crime scene expert and former FBI agent. "Within two hours of finding the body, they are accusing Mr. Taylor of this murder. By sundown, he is arrested for murder. They locked into this narrative."
McCrary also expressed skepticism that Taylor could have committed such a violent crime without his clothes and car being stained in blood.
"It's really unfathomable that they could have committed this crime......to have none of that on them, on the vehicle, especially with this rage-filled event would have been impossible," McCrary said.
A Wake County jury convicted Taylor of killing Jacquetta Thomas, a prostitute in Southeast Raleigh. Taylor, who says he is innocent, 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.
Bevel testified this afternoon that whoever killed Thomas moved her body and would have been covered in blood. That blood would have then stained other items the killer touched.
"Blood is basically uncontrollable," he said. "Anything you come in contact with, you'd expect a transfer."
Investigators found no blood in Taylor's truck or on the clothes he wore that night.
Greg Taylor testified for eight hours this week, keeping his calm as the prosecutor who sent him to prison in 1993 accused him of lying.
Taylor wept a time or two, mostly when describing a drug addiction that he says controlled him in the early 1990s. He never raised his voice, and answered each lawyer's questions with a "sir" or an "I'm sorry" when he couldn't recall a certain detail.
Prison has sobered Taylor, who has spent nearly the last 17 years in one prison or another in North Carolina. Today, he tried to explain the mindset that drove him in 1991, when he abused crack cocaine. He was buying and using drugs with a friend Johnny Beck the night his truck got stuck in the mud near where police found Thomas' body.
"When I was doing crack cocaine, there was no food or water, no relationships, nothing to consider but chasing that next hit," Taylor said.
Later, Superior Court Judge Howard Manning, one of three judges who will be asked to determine whether Taylor should be exonerated, questioned Taylor about his impairment when he used crack cocaine.
Manning asked: "It's not like drinking grain alcohol at college parties? Where you get wiped out and don't remember the next day?"
Taylor said it wasn't. He said that his motor skills were sharp and that he became wired and paranoid.
Tom Ford, a Wake County prosecutor who persuaded a jury in 1993 to convict Greg Taylor of murder, accused him today of remembering only what he wanted to from that night in September 1991.
This morning, Ford accused Taylor of lying to a reporter in September about how he contacted his friend Johnny Beck that night. The News & Observer reported that Taylor called Beck. Taylor said that he ran into Beck when he went to buy drugs in an apartment complex off Western Boulevard that night. The N&O erred in its earlier report.
Ford pressed Taylor further about his interview with The N&O, trying to point out inaccuracies in the description of how he got his truck stuck in the mud near where Jacquetta Thomas' body was found.
"Did you tell [the reporter] that you plowed in the mud?" Ford asked.
Taylor smiled. "It sounds kind of dramatic. More like writer's prose," he said. "I wouldn't have used those words, but that's basically what happened."
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. Wake County District Attorney Colon Willoughby sat silently Tuesday and again this morning as his employee, Ford, fussed at Taylor.
Ford accused Taylor of lying about not coming in contact with Thomas that night. Ford has argued and continues to argue that Taylor and Beck picked up Thomas, intending to buy her drugs in exchange for sex. When she refused to perform a sex act, Ford says that Taylor and Beck lost their temper and killed her, Ford has argued.
This morning, he continued with that theory, saying that Taylor and Beck took her into the cul-de-sac that night instead of taking her out of downtown Raleigh to where they meant to smoke more crack.
Ford asked: "It's not because you had Jacquetta Thomas in the backseat and you didn't want to drive her away and bring her back?" Taylor said flatly: "That woman nor anybody else was in the backseat."
Taylor finished his testimony late this morning. Taylor's attorneys are calling to the stand witnesses who specialize in crime scene analysis.
