For those of you who are fond of the inflexibility of
the three strikes law, I hope you will consider the plight of one Gregory
Taylor. Mr. Taylor has been sentenced
to twenty-five years to life in prison for attempting to open a door to the
kitchen at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Los Angeles. Mr. Taylor was not an unfamiliar face at the
church, as Franciscan priests fed him from time to time.
This incident occurred at 4:00 a.m., and as the
police investigated, Mr. Taylor told the officers he was hoping to find
something to eat and that he knew a priest at the church. At his trial, a priest from the church
testified that they often do furnish food to the hungry, and that Mr. Taylor
may well have believed his behavior was reasonable. The jury convicted, and because Mr. Taylor had two prior strikes
under the statute, the judge had no discretion, and therefore sentenced Mr.
Taylor to twenty-five years to life in prison.
This sentence was affirmed by the Court of Appeals.
The next stop for this case is the California State
Supreme Court. The dissenting Justice
in the Appellate Court, Justice Earl Johnson, likened Mr. Taylor’s situation to
that of Jean Valjean from Victor Hugo’s classic Les Miserables. The Justice indicated that in the epic
novel, a cleric tells a lie in order to free the hero. In this case, a priest tells the truth,
indicating that the church would have given Mr. Taylor its food freely and
happily, yet he is convicted.
Assuming that the State Supreme Court takes this
case, it will be this case’s second visit to the High Court. In January of this year, the Supreme court
ordered the Court of Appeals to take another look at their decision to affirm
this burglary conviction in light of a recently decided case that held that if
one has a good faith claim to ownership of property, that can be a defense
to a felonious taking which is
necessary to establish theft, an element of the burglary conviction in this
matter. This applies to Mr. Taylor’s
case in that his Judge refused to give the jury an instruction indicating that
a defendant would not be guilty of theft “if he has a good faith belief he has
permission to take property, even if the belief is unreasonable.” Well, that sounds exactly like that which
Mr. Taylor is putting forth. It
therefore would seem logical that at a retrial, the trial court judge should
give this instruction to the jury, and an instruction this significant may well
lead to a different verdict. Not so,
says the Court of Appeals. They view
Mr. Taylor’s claim that the priests would have given him the food as
speculative and tenuous, and as not enough to support the requested jury
instruction.
Please remember that the State Supreme Court sent
this case back to the Court of Appeals for a reason. The standard indicated by the State Supreme Court is if one has a
good faith belief he has permission to take property, EVEN IF THE BELIEF IS
UNREASONABLE, he is entitled to a verdict of not guilty. Reasonableness is not the issue here, and
good faith belief is. The fact that Mr.
Taylor was attempting to enter the church at four in the morning to get some
food from the kitchen may not seem reasonable to you or me however; the question
is whether or not he had a good faith belief that what he was doing was proper,
or at least not inappropriate.
As this case heads back to the State Supreme Court,
hopefully the Justices will send this back to the trial court, ordering the
court to give Mr. Taylor a new trial.
At that trial, this very appropriate jury instruction may well serve to
free Mr. Taylor.