Defense seeks to toss evidence
Toolbox
By Brent Curtis STAFF WRITER - Published: December 24, 2009
The defense attorney representing Christian J. Taylor is asking a Rutland judge to exclude statements the 15-year-old made to police a year ago that prosecutors say link him to his mother's killing.
Taylor was 14 and living in Wells when police found his mother, Francine Morgan, dead in the house they shared. Taylor told police he was asleep when his mother was killed. State police said he was the only person in the house when his mother was beaten and shot on Aug. 1, 2008. Investigators also argued that Taylor described details of the crime that only the killer would know. But in a 24-page motion filed in Rutland District Court this week, Taylor's attorney, Brian R. Marsicovetere, argues that the police violated his client's rights under the U.S. and Vermont constitutions.
"The police conducted three to four separate interrogations, each of which carries its own issues," Marsicovetere said Monday during a hearing in court. "Even though he has denied any part in his mother's death, some of the tactics used by the police that we seek to exclude make it appear otherwise."
Marsicovetere succeeded in October in lowering bail for Taylor, who is free on strict conditions of release, after arguing that prosecutors lacked forensic evidence linking Taylor to the crime.
In his motion to suppress, Marsicovetere seeks to take away the interview evidence on a number of arguments ranging from failures to read Taylor his Miranda rights to arguments that police failed to honor requests for legal counsel, gave untrue information about Taylor's rights and provided him with adult guardians who either weren't suited to act in his client's best interest or who were ignored when they tried to assert his rights.
Marsicovetere also said Taylor was evaluated by a neuropsychologist who concluded that Taylor "did not possess the intelligence, cognitive, executive abilities, alertness (due to sleep deprivation), knowledge or experience necessary to understand and appreciate the impact of waiving his constitutional rights, nor was he particularly able to understand and cope with police interviewing strategies."
The police strategies that Marsicovetere focuses on most were used in follow-up interviews more than six hours after Francine Morgan was killed. The first follow-up interview was initiated by Taylor, who called state police detectives to tell them that after getting some sleep he thought he remembered hearing his mother scream, Marsicovetere said. "I think or I was dreaming that my mother was screaming to me – 'Christian, Christian'," Taylor told police, adding that he was trying to create "images" in his head about what happened.
Marsicovetere said investigators seized on that idea and encouraged Taylor to visualize further. "Christian's speculation, that of a barely 14-year-old boy, caused the detectives themselves to speculate that Christian was seeing himself from outside his own body and suggested to him that Native Americans have that ability," Marsicovetere said.
Looking through his "mind's eye" Taylor described a "shadowy figure" a "feeling of a frantic struggle" and seeing his mom "fighting, fighting and trying not to give up," but losing to fatigue. Some of his visions seemed detailed – seeing his mother pinned against a wall, seeing his mother thrown half on and half off the bed, seeing a knife or his dad's nightstick in the attacker's hand.
But Marsicovetere argued that many of the details were inaccurate – Francine Morgan was beaten with a flashlight and shot – and many of his visions could have come from seeing his mother's body that morning when police arrived at the house in response to a 911 call from Francine Morgan.
When asked why the shadowy figure – who police believe was Taylor himself – attacked his mother, Taylor gives varying explanations including a difference of opinion, or a misunderstanding or desire for something. He also talks about the shadowy figure wanting to achieve a form of status and he said his mother said something the shadow wanted was wrong.
When Taylor speculated about other people who may have committed the crime, Marsicovetere said the detectives dismissed his ideas and steered the questioning back toward Taylor. Eventually, he said investigators pressed Taylor to confess telling him that forensic evidence proved no one left the house after the killing – an assertion that Marsicovetere said wasn't true since police found Francine Morgan's blood inside a truck owned by her husband, Brian Morgan.
Assistant Rutland County State's Attorney Kevin Klamm said the state would file a response to Marsicovetere's motion sometime before a two-day hearing on the motion tentatively set for the end of March or early April.
brent.curtis@rutlandherald.com
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