Jury says inmate deserves death

ST. CHARLES, Mo. -- Jurors recommended the death penalty Saturday for a Missouri inmate who killed his prison cellmate.

Michael Taylor 23, was already serving a life sentence for killing a high school girl in 1995.

St. Charles County jurors deliberated three hours Friday before finding Taylor guilty of first-degree murder in the October 1999 strangulation of Shackrein Thomas, 20, at the Potosi Correctional Center.

On Saturday, the jury recommended Taylor be sentenced to death for the crime.

A prosecutor had argued that Taylor told investigators that a voice told him internally to kill Thomas.

Taylor told investigators he put on his tennis shoes for "traction," punched Thomas in the face and put him in a chokehold for about 20 minutes until his body went limp, Rupp said. Taylor said he summoned guards hours later only because Thomas' body was in the way of the toilet, Rupp said.

During the three-day trial, Taylor's defenders argued that their client should be acquitted by reason of insanity.

State public defenders Sharon Turlington and Robert Wolfrum argued that Taylor never got proper help for mental problems and childhood abuse, and that he had been hearing voices since he was 12.

Rupp had suggested that Taylor has been faking mental illness.

But "if he was faking it, he would have to be really good to begin faking it over 10 years ago," Turlington told jurors Friday during proceedings held here on a venue change from Washington County.

Dr. John Rabun, a psychiatrist who evaluated Taylor's records and examined him, testified for the defense that he believed Taylor did not know right from wrong at the time of the killing -- and was not faking symptoms.

But another psychiatrist who evaluated Taylor in fall 2001 said he believed Taylor was making up symptoms. Dr. David Vlach's example: During an interview, Taylor said he could see blood on his hands, though research shows that only 4 percent of schizophrenics have visual hallucinations.

Thomas, of Madison, Wis., was serving an eight-year term for stealing a cell phone, selling methamphetamines and forging a check. He and Taylor had been cellmates at Potosi for nine days.

Taylor was serving a life term in the January 1995 rape and drowning of 15-year-old schoolmate Christine Smetzer in a bathroom stall at St. Louis County's McCluer North High School.

Prosecutors couldn't seek the death penalty in that case because Taylor was 48 days shy of his 16th birthday when he killed the girl. In Missouri, 16 is the minimum age to be eligible for the death penalty.

In the Smetzer killing, defense attorneys argued that Taylor was not fit to stand trial because he was hearing voices, but a judge disagreed.

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