News Brief — Utah Federal Court Grants New Trial to Death-Row Prisoner Von Taylor

NEWS (3/​10/​20): A Utah fed­er­al dis­trict court has grant­ed a new tri­al to death-row pris­on­er Von Taylor based on defense counsel’s inef­fec­tive­ness in fail­ing to inves­ti­gate the facts before advis­ing him whether to plead guilty. Taylor pled guilty to a dou­ble mur­der and was sen­tenced to death based upon the mis­tak­en belief that he had killed the two vic­tims. Because of counsel’s fail­ure to inves­ti­gate, Taylor was unaware of bal­lis­tics evi­dence indi­cat­ing that his co-defen­dant, not Taylor, had fired the shots that killed the vic­tims. In a March 10, 2020 rul­ing, the court found that Taylor had ​“plead­ed guilty to two cap­i­tal mur­ders based on inex­cus­ably unin­formed advice from coun­sel which then exposed him to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of execution.”