Innocence panel will hear convicted killer (Page 1 of 3)

Wow.  I hope justice prevails.  Sounds like this guy, at least, is legitimate and if so I hope he is freed. 

Didn't even test the substance they thought was blood to see whether it was blood or that it belonged to the victim.  Amazing.  Look, I know that CSI on TV is bullsnot nonsense, but it does seem that there ought to be SOMETHING that would have connected the victim to the man jailed aside from the proximity of his vehicle. 

- Zurf

It is mind boggling to me that in this day and age, they simply don't just check the DNA as part of the investigation.

^ Toney, no I lost contact with "Tator" when I moved to Florida, and the alleged crime took place when I was down there. Another friend corresponded with him for a few years, but eventually even that dropped off. Greg has always maintained his innocence, but honestly he was hanging with a rough crowd and was apparently really partying hard that night.

What has always gotten me was - he drove right up to the lot in the morning with his wife to get his truck while the cops were there! If he were involved in any way, Greg was certainly smart enough to avoid the crime scene.

I've never been one of those " I'm-uh-sue-yer-arse" types but in this case I'd proudly be whistlin' a different tune.
I would joyously volunteer my services, free of charge, if at all possible, to perform at Gregory Taylors' "freedom party"!!!!

Seriously....

So did they set him free?

Ha Topdown!

18 years!?! Doesn't bear thinking about. If there was the death penalty he wouldn't be here AND everyone would look at his memory as that of a murderer.

Yeah! £10,000,000/year should cover it; as I said earlier, if there was a significant financial deterrent to situations like this, maybe everyone from police and investigators up would at least make sure they had an airtight case!

Here's to Tator's immenent release!

I am a friend of Greg Taylor. All of his old friends called him Tater. We've all known for years that he is innocent...sent to prison for life because of false testimony, an eager-to-prosecute DA, and a series of very poor lawyers that represented him. Now it appears as the rest of the world is hearing the truth.

Greg always was an intelligent, big-hearted guy that could quickly make friends with anyone, and would do anything he could for anyone whether he knew them or not. Needless to say his family & friends want him released.

If you would like to keep up with the latest on Greg, here is a link to a Blog set up by his brother Eddy. Feel free to sign up as a Follower on the blog.

http://freegregtaylor.blogspot.com/

Greg has always been a huge music fan and not long before went to prison he had bought a new Stratocaster and was learning to play.  Let's all hope & pray that he will be released soon so he can get back to the family, friends, & life he loved.

Darren Riley - Raleigh NC

Good article in today's paper.

Prisoner awaits decision on release

BY MANDY LOCKE - Staff Writer

SMITHFIELD -- Greg Taylor has a head for numbers.

He'll tell you exactly how many Budweisers he had on Sept. 25, 1991, the night he drove into Southeast Raleigh looking for drugs to keep his night going. He knows he's read more than 800 books in the years the state has kept him locked up for murder. And, by his reckoning, today is the 6,003rd day he will spend in prison for a crime he has insisted from the beginning he never committed.

Matters of the heart are tougher for Taylor. Mention Kristen, the daughter he had to abandon as a child, and he buckles in sobs. Ask him about the battle his sister lost with cancer in 2006, Taylor will shake his head and mutter that he should have been there. Ask him how he feels about the guy who has now confessed to murdering Jacquetta Thomas, Taylor is practically speechless.

"It just never occurs to you that an innocent person could get dragged into something like this," Taylor said Saturday in his first interview since the N.C. Innocence Inquiry Commission voted unanimously this month that he is innocent.

Taylor waits now, still a prisoner as his case moves to a three-judge panel to be convened by the chief justice of the State Supreme Court. Wake County District Attorney Colon Willoughby can either contest Taylor's request to be exonerated or petition the court to vacate his sentence before the panel convenes.

The delay is agonizing for Taylor and his family. It's also frustrating for Thomas' family.

"I hate it's taking even one more day," said Yolanda Littlejohn, Thomas' sister. Littlejohn said she has always thought Taylor was innocent, and after sitting through the commission's hearing, she is pained by Taylor's misfortune. "You don't keep a man locked up because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Taylor is a measured, calm man who settled into his captivity. He accepted the gifts of imprisonment -- sobriety and reflection -- and tried to make peace with its insults.

"Anger's out the door a long time ago," Taylor said. "You can't survive for any length of time on bitterness and blame."

Reading and learning became his salvation. He earned two associates degrees in prison and became a teaching assistant for community college professors who teach inside the prison. At Johnston Correctional Institution, Taylor manages the library, linking other inmates with authors he thinks they will like.

Taylor's arrest stemmed from a night of bad luck and bad choices. The night Jacquetta Thomas was murdered, Taylor said, he had ventured into Southeast Raleigh, trolling for crack. He and Johnny Beck, a local he'd befriended months before, pulled into a dark, muddy path to smoke, he said.

Taylor said they saw Thomas' body, stripped, beaten and stabbed. Taylor asked Beck if they should call for help. Beck urged him to forget about it and move along. Taylor's truck got stuck in the mud up the path from Thomas' body; he left it there. Police immediately considered him a suspect.

Taylor figured he would quickly straighten things out. He endured two interrogations. He turned over his clothes and pocket knives. When police asked for his hair to do a DNA test, he couldn't rip it out fast enough.

"At any given time, there were a hundred things we could have done differently if we were guilty," Taylor said.

By day's end, Taylor was locked up in the Wake County jail.

"It's so frustrating to go up against all these people," Taylor said. "They have all this power. You have the truth, but they refuse to look at it."

A jury convicted him based on a jailhouse snitch's testimony and vague statements by a prostitute. Over the next decade, county, state and federal judges would block every attempt to undo his conviction.

Daughter lost hope

Kristen Puryear spent her entire childhood thinking police were bad.

"They took my daddy," says Puryear, 26.

As a girl, she couldn't understand why her dad was out that night or why police thought the man who read her stories was a murderer.

One day she got home from school, and her dad was gone for good. For Christmas that year, her grandmother brought her a gold cross from her father. She's worn it every day since, and pinned it under her wedding dress as a substitute for her father's escort.

Taylor missed Kristen's prom, her birthdays, her high school and college graduations. He missed her wedding, too, and the birth of her son, Charles.

"I had lost hope he would get out," said Puryear. "No one would listen."

When she visited her father, they talked about her studies at Virginia Tech, her new house, her husband. Last year, he held his grandson, leaning across the visitor's table to take the sleeping baby from his daughter.

These days, their conversations have switched to talking about the adventures they'll have when and if Taylor is free. Kristen is eager to take him to a Virginia Tech football game. She's planning to cook a feast for his first meal as a free man.

Taylor prepares, too. He flips through his certificates and diplomas, wondering which might help him land a job. He scans the shelves in the prison library, wondering if there's a book to help him get ready for this transition.

He's not sure how to begin again. He is almost the age his parents were when he went into prison.

"I don't know what 47 is, I only know what 31 is," Taylor said. "I think I want to go home and be invisible for a while."

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local_ … 13985.html

That's great but at the same time so sad and tragic. What courage and grace to let that anger go...God Bless him. The world owes him so good fortune

I can only hope that the media lets him be invisible for awhile. He deserves the respect and dignity owed to him and his family.

Enjoy your first home cooked meal in too long a time Mr.Taylor.

Kenny

Toney - (I just returned from a weekend getaway trip to the mountains, sorry for the delayed response). That is an awesome offer, but hopefully one that will not come to fruition. Not that it wouldn't be great to have you, but the hope is that one day soon, the DA (after reviewing the overwhelming evidence) will vacate the charges and Greg will be set free. As I understand it, if this happens, there will be virtually no notice. If the case does go to the "three judge panel", there is no telling how long that could take. I will certainly keep this thread updated with any news.

I received the below email from Eddy Taylor (Greg's brother) on Friday that I though I would share. I had written an email to the DA imploring him to release Tater and posted the email address on his blog. Apparently that was frowned upon by the attorney.

Hi Jeff
I asked an attorney about the email address and they said it was best to not to post the information. I took the addresses off the board. Thank you for jumping in for the cause . It's people like you that are making the difference in Greg's case. I'll be posting tonight about a gathering at the courthouse downtown. Let people know to come on out if you talk to any one from Raleigh.
BTW I've had several people ask me about the Chordie Forum. The site comes up on google and when you make a new post it comes right up to the front of the list. The comments are great. Keep it going.
Thanks
Eddy