Opinion ID: 6326955
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Murder of Michael Taylor

Text: During the evening of December 27, 1980, three men came to the door of Cora Taylor's apartment at 11810 ½ Vermont Avenue, not far from the Hassan home. Residing with Cora were her son Michael (who sold marijuana) and her daughter Mary. The men, one of whom Cora identified at trial as defendant Ross, walked into the living room and asked to speak to Michael. When Michael and Mary came out of the next room, accompanied by William Birdsong, a friend who was visiting, one of the men, whom Cora and Mary later identified as Evan Malett, grabbed Birdsong. A struggle ensued, which ended when Malett drew a gun and ordered Cora, Mary, Michael, and Birdsong to sit on the bed. Malett then demanded money and drugs. When Mary said they did not have any, one of the three men hit her in the jaw with his fist. The men then ordered the Taylors and Birdsong to lie face down on the bed, opened Cora's purse, and ransacked the premises. While the three robbers were rummaging through the apartment, a fourth man (apparently a lookout) came to the door but did not enter. At Cora's urging, Michael told the robbers that there was money in a box in the kitchen. At that point one of the men, whom Mary ROSS V. DAVIS 9 later identified as defendant Ross, grabbed Mary by the hair and forced her to go into the bathroom, where he raped her. He then left the bathroom, returning moments later to rape Mary again. Thereafter, Malett entered the bathroom and unsuccessfully tried to rape Mary. The three men then ordered Birdsong and Cora to join Mary in the bathroom. A short time later, Cora and Mary heard a shot. After a few minutes, they left the bathroom and found Michael in the living room, dead. A prosecution expert testified that Michael had died from a single shot from a high-powered weapon (such as a .357 magnum), fired at close range. The agent also testified that the gun used to kill Bobby Hassan could not have been the murder weapon, but that the bullet could have been fired by the .357-caliber Ruger stolen from the Hassan home. Missing from the Taylor's apartment was an 8-track tape player. Also missing was a Christmas present—a photo album—which had been taken out of its wrapping. Later that night, shortly after midnight, Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriff Ted Naimy saw a brown Buick automobile that contained four Black males and did not have its headlights turned on in the neighborhood where Michael Taylor had been murdered. As the Buick pulled alongside of him, Deputy Naimy and his partner ordered it to stop. 10 ROSS V. DAVIS Instead, the car sped away. As the deputies pursued the Buick, it went out of control, struck a curb, and came to a halt. Its four occupants jumped out of the car and ran. Inside the car, the deputy found the 8-track tape player stolen from the Taylor apartment and the .357-caliber Ruger revolver stolen from the Hassan home. The gun contained two live rounds and an empty shell casing, and smelled as if it had recently been fired. Under the car, Deputy Naimy found the photograph album stolen from the Taylors. Police searched the neighborhood for the occupants of the Buick. They found Evan Malett hiding in a backyard of a nearby house, in which defendant Champion was living. Natasha Wright, the Taylors' next-door neighbor, identified defendant Ross at trial as one of the men she saw arrive at the Taylors' apartment. Prosecution experts testified that two latent fingerprints lifted from the bathtub in the Taylors' apartment belonged to Ross, and that spermatozoa found on Mary's pants were consistent with Ross's blood type, which is shared by roughly 11 percent of the population. [. . .]