We owe Louis Taylor freedom, justice
By Joel Nilsson
Mon Apr 15, 2013 7:35 AM
Louis Taylor chose immediate freedom over future justice. He chose wisely. But by most standards of legal decency, Taylor should have found freedom and justice right away.
Sadly, Pima County Attorney Barbara LaWall could not find it in her heart to give Taylor his unconditional freedom. She shamefully clung to old history — that a jury in 1972 had convicted the half Mexican, half African-American of 28 counts of first-degree murder for igniting the historic Pioneer Hotel in downtown Tucson on Dec. 20, 1970. Far be it from her to overturn a jury’s verdict.
But the new evidence is compelling. The prosecution deliberately withheld a critical scientific report from a testing laboratory that found that no accelerants were discovered on hotel carpeting. The alleged use of an accelerant was central to the prosecution’s case, and one witness testified that Taylor told him that he sprayed lighter fluid. That witness, a jailhouse snitch, later recanted his testimony, but the image of a kid squirting lighter fluid in the hotel’s fourth-floor hallway was powerful.
Materially, the state’s fire expert, Cy Holmes, concluded that the fire had multiple origins. But new fire science that considers the effects of flashover burning discredited Holmes’ conclusion. The result: There is no evidence that the fire was intentionally set.
The inescapable conclusion that we are left with is this: If a jury knew what we know today, Taylor would not have been convicted, nor spent 42 years in prison, wasting a life that was problematic even before his arrest as a street-wise, 16-year-old high-school dropout.
One of the last times I saw Taylor was in 1972 in a courtroom in Phoenix when the jury was ready to pass judgment on the 18-year-old defendant.
Taylor was with his defense attorney Howard Kashman, the Pima County public defender who had waged a steely and concerted effort to prove Taylor’s innocence. What Kashman lacked in flash and theatrics he made up for with attention to detail and thoughtfulness.
I was new to Arizona, recently hired by the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson. The Taylor trial was my first big assignment. Providing Tucson readers daily coverage of a murder case that was probably the biggest in the Old Pueblo’s history was a primo assignment.
After six weeks of testimony, the case against Taylor remained one built upon circumstantial evidence, largely on the fact that he had five matchbooks when he was arrested. His defense team expressed hopes of acquittal, while the prosecutor, Horton Weiss, (known to court observers as “Snortn’ Horton”) exuded a smug confidence that his pit-bull tactics would carry the day.
The verdicts were read: Twenty-eight times, “guilty” filled the courtroom like a steady drumbeat. I looked at Taylor. His head was bowed, and he began to sob, “I’m not guilty. I’m not guilty.”
Later, I was in Judge Charles Hardy’s chambers when he made a curious statement, one that raised the specter of judicial skepticism over the verdicts. “The evidence supports a conviction, but I would not have convicted him myself,” Judge Hardy said.
I remember turning to the reporter for The Arizona Republic, Howard Armstrong. We both wondered if we heard the judge right. We had.
For 42 years, I was never totally convinced the right person was serving 28 life sentences in Arizona’s prison system.
This month, I jumped at the chance to see a fit, trim Taylor. He had just been released from prison, thanks to a 10-year effort by the Arizona Justice Project.
Taylor finished a private interview with CBS News, a nod to “60 Minutes,” which has aired two segments on Taylor, the first in 2002 that questioned the fire science, and the most recent that talked about Taylor’s agonizing decision: Would he choose immediate freedom or stick to his principles and take his chances in a new trial even if it meant two or three years longer in prison?
Clearing his name and wiping the record clean were important to Taylor. He had refused parole hearings and clemency hearings in the past because that would have required an acknowledgment of guilt. As a trusty, he refused to escape prison grounds because, he said, only the guilty run.
But when all was said and done, Taylor chose freedom. He pondered how he could have dealt with another hour, another minute in prison for a crime he says he did not commit. “I wanted my freedom,” he said.
His CBS interview was emotional and poignant. He broke down in tears several times, questioning why the Pima County attorney did not cure “the injustice” and just let him go. Instead, in exchange for his release for time already served, he had been forced to plead “no contest,” a legal mechanism that means Taylor is still a felon.
On his way to a news conference for Arizona media, I intercepted Taylor and introduced myself. Smiling, as a man finally enjoying his freedom should, we shook hands.
There was little recognition. I had not expected him to recognize me, or even my name. While the trial was an exciting event important to me, for Taylor, it was time to think only about the future.
His gaze revealed neither warmth nor coldness. It was almost as if he did not know what to say, stranger to stranger. I broke the awkward silence with my congratulations and wished him luck. He thanked me, and was shepherded into the news conference.
The questions from local news media not unexpectedly probed his agonizing decision. “I had no choice,” he said. “She (LaWall) didn’t want to do the honorable thing.”
Taylor wanted a life of freedom now, not the inside of a cell for two or three more years as his quest for innocence and exoneration made its slow, meandering, and inexorable way through the courts.
He made his decision, and who can blame him?
Joel Nilsson is a freelance writer and editor. He retired from The Arizona Republic’s editorial board in 2008 after 31 years with the newspaper.