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Chattanooga: Convicted murderer makes plea to jury

By: Monica Mercer
(Contact)

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A convicted killer who faces the death penalty blamed rap music and a felon father for his choice to lead a “life of crime,” telling those who will decide his sentence that he can do right in prison if given the chance.

Rejon Taylor, however, never acknowledged his murder victim during his statements to the jury, instead reading portions of letters from his fellow inmates that seemed to communicate how his “higher calling” would be shattered if he died.

“You have been my inspiration,” wrote one friend, according to a letter Mr. Taylor read Tuesday in federal court during the sentencing phase of his trial. Another letter thanked Mr. Taylor for “being a light of Jesus.”

“I just wanted to show you the type of influence I’m capable of having on people,” Mr. Taylor said with a smile, trying to convince the jury not to put him to death.

It was the first time he had spoken in open court to the 12 jurors who found him guilty in mid-September of first-degree murder, kidnapping and carjacking. In recorded telephone conversations made from jail after the verdict, he called them “little redneck-looking folks” and expressed disappointment in their inability to recognize his innocence.

But Mr. Taylor had remained silent and largely without a spot of visible emotion since his federal death penalty trial began Aug. 25 in Chattanooga. He watched as witness after witness pieced together the story of three teenagers whose identity-theft routine would lead to the interstate kidnapping and slaying of a wealthy Atlanta restaurant owner in 2003. Mr. Taylor’s two friends who were implicated in the crime pleaded guilty in 2006.

“I’m kinda nervous and a little bit afraid,” Mr. Taylor said Tuesday as the prosecution and defense held hearings this week to influence jurors whose only legal options are life in prison or death.

True to testimony from family members about how shy he is, the diminutive Mr. Taylor spoke softly and often stumbled on his words, making it difficult to picture him as the man who fired a bullet through Guy Luck’s mouth on a secluded road in Collegedale in broad daylight.

Mr. Taylor said he grew up in a single-parent home and that his father “was locked up the first 10 years of my life.”

The defendant would come to admire certain aspects of his father, however, despite his father’s criminal background.

“I heard him trying to wire millions of dollars over the phone,” Mr. Taylor said, later admitting that any notion of making an honest living disappeared when he started to hear rumors of how his father could get “$30,000, $40,000 easily out of the bank.”

“At this time my dad was into ID theft and bank fraud,” Mr. Taylor said. “I secretly wanted to be like him in my heart.”

Identity theft would become the linchpin of Mr. Taylor’s life when, at 17, he and two friends began a mailbox-robbing ruse in the wealthy Atlanta neighborhood of Buckhead. One of their victims was Mr. Luck, an entrepreneur and French national who was in the process of building a second home and had a habit of never checking his mailbox.

Authorities said Mr. Taylor “stalked” Mr. Luck for at least a year, even eating at his French restaurant, Violette, at one point and determining he must have been rich because of the menu prices.

Mr. Taylor then led the charge to kidnap Mr. Luck from his driveway in August 2003, authorities said, and ultimately shot him dead just across the Tennessee state line. Prosecutors said Mr. Taylor wanted to get rid of Mr. Luck because he believed the restaurant owner had caught on to the identity-theft scam.

Chaplain Bill W. Smith, who has counseled Mr. Taylor at the Hamilton County Jail almost since the beginning of his incarceration in 2003, also testified Tuesday, saying Mr. Taylor is a “peacemaker.” Even a prominent gang leader in the jail, Mr. Smith said, had told him that “Rejon is the person who’s had the most influence on him.”

When federal prosecutor Steve Neff told Mr. Smith about the recent phone calls where the defendant seemed to mock the victim and continues to dodge responsibility, Mr. Smith said he was surprised.

“(Mr. Smith) has obviously been fooled by the defendant, as have a lot of people,” Mr. Neff said.

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