Coyote TV - High Desert Advocate

Life Sentence For Copping A Feel?

Written by Howard Copelan

Friday, 23 April 2010

Michelle Lyn Taylor with attorney Public Defender Alina Kirkpatrick

Michelle Lyn Taylor received life sentence for forcing a boy to touch her breasts last week in Elko. Two years earlier in a plea bargain Ace Green spent 10 months in the Elko County Jail for sexually abusing two young boys over the course of at least a year. both sentencing hearing are available on www.coyote-tv.com.

story continues below

          In one of the most eloquent and impassioned speeches ever heard in an Elko County Courtroom Elko Public Defender Alina Kirkpatrick pleaded with Judge Michael Memeo not to impose the mandatory life sentence on Michelle Lyn Taylor for forcing a boy to touch her breasts two years ago in Jackpot.
   While obviously deeply moved with her plea and confessing dismay at why no plea bargain was ever offered to the Twin falls woman, Memeo had no choice but to sentence the 34 year old Taylor to the only sentence allowed by the legislature-- Life in prison with the earliest possible parole after ten years.
   The sentencing hearing is now being exclusively web cast on the High Desert Advocate’s web site www.coyote-tv.com.
   Taylor was convicted of lewdness with a minor under 14 in November after a week-long trial.
   According to Kirkpatrick the woman had been offered no plea bargain and that the jury had not been informed that the life sentence would be imposed on Taylor should she be found guilty.
   In 2007 the Nevada Legislature removed any discretion from a judge in the sentencing of lewdness with minors and set a blanket mandatory life sentence for all offenders convicted of the crime.
   Since then well over 95 percent of defendants originally charged with the crime plead guilty to a lessor charge with a greatly reduced penalty.
   “Why you were charged with these crimes particularly, I don’t. know,” Memeo said. “Why plea bargains are offered to some and not to others, I don’t know. I do know that you were charged and found guilty for this charge by a jury and this is the sentence. Good luck.”
   Memeo is known as being generally opposed to the plea bargain process because he has said allows for unequal justice and different outcomes for essentially the same crime or a harsher sentence for a lessor crime and a more lenient sentence for a severe violation.
   Underscoring that argument Kirkpatrick brought up example after example of Nevada women originally charged with much harsher much more venal cases of child abuse who did not receive any where near the sentence her client must now serve.
   “If she was charged with murder,” Kirkpatrick said. “She would be facing a 50 year sentence.”
   All sides of the case agree to the details.

story continues below

    In February 2008 Taylor was in an apartment with a friend’s 13 year old boy, kissed the youth told him to fondle her breasts and asked him to have sex with her.
   “That was it,” Woodbury said in an interview with the High Desert Advocate Wednesday. “That was all the investigation found.”
   The District Attorney did say that initial plea negotiations were begun but were quickly stopped when Taylor said she would refuse any plea bargain that included her having to register as a sex offender.
   However even Woodbury said that the mandatory sentence did not fit this particular crime.
   “Don’t get me wrong, this woman was convicted of serious crime,” Woodbury said. “When plea negotiations broke down we had no choice but to charge her and once convicted the judge (Mike Memeo) had to follow the sentencing guidelines. The people to blame are the legislators who passed this law.”

continues below

    “This is what happens when the legislature passes a blanket law and takes the discretion out of the courtroom.”
   The life sentence Taylor received for telling a boy to cop a feel in teenage slang contrast greatly with the most notorious local case of child sexual abuse.
   Almost two years to the day Taylor received her life sentence, Ace Green was sentence to just one year in jail for serially molesting to young boys in his care.
        Green now 22 was a former WWHS Football star and competitive marksman. He initially pled guilty to two counts of sexual abuse of minor children November 2007 in exchange for the District Attorney’s dropping several other counts. Green was originally charged with over a dozen counts of child rape that took place during at least a year.

story continues below

   In the original plea bargain Green was set to be charged as a minor which could have meant while the amount of time would have been the same or perhaps longer, his record could have been wiped clean after a period of time.
   Despite denials from the District Attorney’s office that public pressure influenced plea negotiations the original plea deal was scrapped only after it was widely publicized.
   Green was release from jail last year after serving 10 months in the Elko County Jail. Taylor began her life sentence immediately after her sentence was handed down.
   Taylor has always claimed she was intoxicated and doesn’t remember what happened that night. She told jurors during her trial that she roughhoused with the boy, but didn’t force him to touch her inappropriately.
   According to Woodbury, the boy now 15 is still in counseling.

editorial continues below

THE LAW IS AN ASS

by Howard Copelan

    Michelle Lyn Taylor is a unattractive woman, probably not very bright who did a very stupid and possibly evil thing.
   She still does not deserve life in prison.
   Yes we are aware, there are certain duties incumbent upon prosecutors and Taylor probably was her own worst enemy.
   But above and beyond all consideration, all duties there is the responsibility to be a human being and to be humane even to the stupid and the ugly.
   As readers of foreign press we are often appalled by the harsh and reprehensible treatment most often meted out in Islamic countries; a woman is sentence to a whipping for being raped, a man is sentenced to death by stoning for claiming to be a psychic.
   We are gratified to be living in a country and a culture that would never allow such miscarriages of justice.
   But should we be?
   As Michelle Taylor’s case illustrates the law can be an ass any and every where.
   In the rush to be holier than thou our legislature passed a law in 2007 that in effect equated boob touching with child rape.
   Perhaps our representatives were too afraid of not being politically correct, perhaps they were just being stupid. Regardless of the reason for diminished mental capacity they passed a dumb law and Michelle Taylor did a dumb thing.
   In between the legislature and the sentencing however there was the District Attorney’s office while we respect the many lawyers who work hard and diligently to protect the people of our county.
   Someone could have and should have said something.
   Not for Michelle Taylor but for the simple and profound concept of justice and common human decency.
   It is obvious that while her case was being considered no one bother to asked in discussion of could they get a conviction the question of should they seek a conviction?
   We suppose one could make the case that the prosecutors hands were tied, that they really had no choice in the matter.
   The problem with that argument is that being free people with free choice there is always a choice, sometimes doing the right thing is difficult and sometimes it is hard but there is always a choice.
   The gross unfairness between her life sentence and lesser ones meted out to perpetrators of far worse crimes should strike us all to our core.
   We hope she appeals her sentence and we hope she wins, not for her sake but for ours.