Michelle Lyn Taylor’s life sentence for molesting a 13 year old Jackpot boy three years ago is now before the Nevada Supreme Court, said the woman’s appellant attorney Jack Cornell.
“We are claiming that her life sentence is unconstitutional as it is cruel and unusual punishment,” Cornell said Tuesday in an interview with the High Desert Advocate.
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Taylor was sentenced to life in prison in 2010 in a case the gained the interest of the country primarily because of heavy punishment and the emotional performance by her trial attorney Alina by Kilpatrick at the woman’s sentencing.
In one of the most eloquent and impassioned speeches ever heard in an Elko County Courtroom the Elko Public Defender pleaded with Judge Michael Memeo not to impose the mandatory life sentence on Michelle Lyn Taylor for forcing a boy to touch her breasts three years ago in Jackpot.
Viral sentencing video below
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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.
When hearing was first posted on the Advocate’s web page www.coyote-tv.com the video went viral garnering over 100,000 views.
Taylor was convicted of lewdness with a minor under 14 in November 2009 after a week-long trial.
According to Kilpatrick 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 at the time. “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 was 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 Kilpatrick 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,” Kilpatrick said. “She would be facing a 50 year sentence.”
All sides of the case agree to the details.
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,” then District Attorney Gary Woodbury said in an interview with the High Desert Advocate. “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.”
“This is what happens when the legislature passes a blanket law and takes the discretion out of the courtroom.”
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.
This woman gets life for inappropriate behavior with a minor and Toni Fratto gets 18 years for being the master mind and taking part of a cruel murder. Something is severely wrong with the justice system. Not saying what this woman did doesn’t justify punishment just saying the laws need to change.
Because the justice system is a broken corrupt extension of our corporate oligarchy government.
The politicians we elect get to just lie through their teeth until they are elected, then they get to behave however they want with no checks on their actions.
How can a government operate like that? Answer: it cannot. Well, it can. But it will eventually collapse, and that’s exactly what is happening.
As a Canadian, I would like to know what country this sentencing occured in, surley not my neighbor to the South, it must be Saudi Arabia.
the west (run by freemasons and feminist extremists) has lost the plot when dealing with sex crimes most legislation needs to be removed asap only rape laws are needed the rest just criminalise whole section of humanity.
I’m not sure if you’re spinning it this way because you genuinely don’t have the facts or if you’re actively trying to engage in child sexual abuse apologetics, but your entire argument here is simply inaccurate.
Firstly the sentencing video has been altered. If you pay close attention to the dialogue and time stamping, you will find that the 3m40s of summations from both sides have been conveniently edited out.
However, in addition to the lie about the plea bargain which you uncovered; every claim that lawyer made is proven to be a lie by the evidence.
Firstly, the following article covered the appeal: http://elkodaily.com/news/local/defense-argues-unusual-punishment-in-lewdness-case/article_a32e1d84-e079-11e0-a3ec-001cc4c03286.html
Of interest is the following passage in it:
“Thompson said Taylor had lured the victim and his younger brother over to her residence with the promise of being able to play Playstation 3. After watching TV for some time, the boy went to ask Taylor about playing the game system. Taylor, according to Thompson, closed the door to her bedroom, gently pushed the boy down onto the bed and then straddled him.
Thompson said she then took off her hooded sweatshirt and placed the boy’s hand underneath her bra. Thompson said there was contact of her groin against his against his will, and there was skin-to-skin contact of her forcing his hand upon her breast. She then attempted to remove his clothing. Thompson said Taylor also demanded the boy have sex with her, which is contrary to other claims by the defense that she requested it.”
By my count, there are three instances of child sexual molestation and child sexual assault there- the forced groping (tantamount to child molestation), the forced grinding (sexual assault) and trying to rip his clothes off whilst repeatedly demanding sex (attempted rape). It should be noted here that she lost both the trial and the appeal, meaning that her actions pertaining to the child have been proven beyond reasonable doubt; not once, but twice: http://elkodaily.com/news/local/supreme-court-to-decide-on-elko-appeals/article_41994a10-4778-11e1-97f7-001871e3ce6c.html
You also need to consider the scope of what “Lewdness with a minor under 14” or NRS 201.230 actually covers. As the following law firm FAQ page covers, NRS 201.230 covers any sexual act with a child under 14, of a sexual nature, upto and excluding, acts of sexual penetration: http://www.shouselaw.com/nevada/lewd-minor.html
What Taylor was proven to have been guilty of is on the very extreme end of this statue- meaning that even if there was an argument for a lesser lesser charge for acts on the opposite end of the scale (and such an argument is of dubious merit); it still wouldn’t apply in Taylor’s case.
Furthermore this is a woman who as you have pointed out, is in denial about her sexual tendencies (eg “just rough housing”) and has demonstrated a desire to go under the radar (eg her refusal to accept a plea deal being based entirely on her refusal to voluntarily register as a sex offender). As the above link on the outcome of her appeal also notes, she appealed solely on the grounds of an evidence review, rather than also appealing on the grounds of a sentencing review.
In this case, common sense says that it is only a matter of when this woman would prey on a child again and that therefore she needs to be kept locked away from the general public until such time that she admits she has a problem and is willing to accept help with it. That is precisely what a 10 year minimum (arguably not a true life sentence as a true life sentence is “life without the possibility of parole”) does in this case; every minute she spends locked up past 10 years, will be almost entirely the result of her choices and hers alone.
Then there’s the whopper Kirkpatrick went into about the severity of the sentence as compared to murder. Unless Kirkpatrick got her law degree out of the bottom of a cereal box, she would know that in Nevada, crimes against kids – particularly crimes against kids under the age of 14 – are regarded as especially heinous and punished accordingly.
Herein lies the rub. Kirkpatrick was referring to the sentence for murdering an adult, not murdering a child.
A quick survey of penalties for sex crimes against kids in Nevada reveals that the justice system there has little tolerance for such heinous acts. Any physical act upto rape gets a 10 year minimum, while raping a kid under the age of 14 will see you the offender get a 25 year minimum- or in cases where substantial bodily harm to the child occurs, life without parole: http://www.shouselaw.com/nevada/sexual-assault.html
Murdering a child under that age of 14 in Nevada is no exception. As people might be aware, Nevada still has the death penalty – in their case, death by lethal injection. However there are only a handful of exceptions where it applies. One of them is murdering a child under the age of 14: http://www.shouselaw.com/nevada/death-penalty.html
In short, this sentence was entirely just, and in terms of her conduct after she was arrested, in addition to her conduct when committing the crime, it was entirely self-inflicted. She committed acts which fall under the extreme end of what she was charged with, meaning the she was charged with precisely the right statute. Even then, in terms of the plea bargain and the appeal, she had 2 lifelines to get a lesser sentence and threw them both away.
However something in society’s chauvinistic senses wont let that process. People don’t see a child predator who is unrepentant, a menace to kids and a complete idiot who shot herself in the foot; they see a uterus which they are instinctively compelled to protect as though she were some perpetual damsel in distress, locked away in a giant tower guarded by a fierce dragon, in dire need of rescue.
People don’t see the child victim in all of this; they see a penis on legs, and therefore a much worse piece of chauvinism exists than blaming a woman for being raped based on how she was dressed – in people’s minds he must have wanted it because he has a penis between his legs. Radical feminists would even most likely claim that he must have raped her.
The double standard is so telling in the United States, that in multiple cases where children as young as 12 have been raped by female pedophiles and the pedophile has gotten pregnant as a result of raping the child; the child victim has been forced to pay child support, to the pedophile.
Ultimately, either people consider violating a child to be a heinous, deeply traumatising event, or they are of a mind that child abuse is acceptable- in some cases, no doubt believing it is a positive thing. Either all child sexual abuse is unacceptable to people – including the molestation and attempted rape of a 13 year old boy by a 34 year old woman, or people have no problem with child abuse – including grown adults raping 6 year old children.
However to complain about this sentence on one hand and then, as many people have, to complain about the recent case in Montana where a man got 30 days in jail for raping a 6 year old boy, is the height of hypocrisy.
I’ll be very interested to see not only whether this comment gets published, but whether you use the evidence listed to amend the article in the interests of journalistic integrity.
Even though Judge Michael Memeo sentenced her to Life in prison, and that was the sentence, not ten years, he did mention that he didn’t understand why she had been charged with these crimes.
Andrew, are you also saying that the judge had no idea what was going on?
The Judge must have been aware of this in his sentencing, and by saying he didn’t understand why she was charged, he must have known, correct?
For the defence attorney not to be aware of the facts could be a case of malpractice, but the Judge?
This is madness! The poor woman does not deserve this. Who thinks this is an appropriate punishment for this woman’s crime? No one could agree with this. Neither the prosecution nor the judge agreed with this! When we agreed to put all child molesters away for life, we did not realize it would lead to this. Cue Elizabeth Shaw in Prometheus: http://cdn.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=dvksmtpdmk&as=1
One would expect this type of judicial lunacy to have existed during the Dark Ages or even in present day Saudi Arabia but to learn of its existence right here in the United States is not only shocking, it is almost unbelievable. And as far as I’m concerned the State of Nevada is a disgrace and an embarrassment to every American.
This goes above and beyond excessive. Blanket laws are never a good idea. However, this woman should have sucked it up and registered as a sex offender. If she ever gets out of the pen, she will have to anyway. She IS a sex offender. She should have just taken a plea even if it entailed that. Yes, it’s excessive, but it is entirely her own fault for even being there in the first place and even more so for not allowing a negotiation to happen CIA she didn’t want to be called something that she is.
For all of you with your negative comments. Know who you’re talking about. My sister may be a lot of things but in my heart I know she’s not a child molester. No one really knows all the details of what happened that day but her and that boy. Ive seen the boy in the past year and everything they say about him being messed up from it, didnt show one bit why he was outside chilling like it was any other day. So miss me with all your bs posted on here. Michelle still has family out here that love her and believe in her innocence.
I would have thought that she’d be out of prison by now, because she’s done too much time already. I’m glad she’s got a family to go to when she IS released. As for that judge…if he sentenced ME to life and then ordered me to pay fees for DNA tests, and this and that, I would have told him to shove it up his ass sideways. What could he do…give me MORE time ? I often wonder all the time how some judges and lawyers sleep at night. Short of being TOTALLY, FACTUALLY innocent, this is the worst miscarriage of justice that I’ve ever heard of.
What a messed up country the usa is. Life sentence for this crime is just beyond stupid. USA is a police state. The forfeiture laws for example are just pure disgusting. They saw the USA is land of the free. What a complete joke of a statement that is. I really feel sorry for this woman. She should at most done two years. A life sentence is retarded but the police and law makers control everything. If this woman got this sentence in saudi arabia the us would be up in arms but its happening on your own doorstep.
Another case of a woman doing life for supplying 3000 dollars worth of oxycontin. These case’s make your country look backwards. People in the usa need to start fighting back against the police state. Just have a look into your forfeiture laws to back this up.
Also you need to get rid of guns. Only read today that a two year old shot himself. The gun was in the glove compartment of the car. Who needs a gun to go shopping. It really is simple if theirs no guns then you dont need to defend yourself against guns. In any civilised country you should not need a gun to go shopping. Its retarded. I live in a country where guns are banned and guess what there’s very little shootings or gun crime. Wonder why that is. I have been to the usa a good few times. Great people but to live there must be a nightmare. The police are your over excessive laws are ruining a great country.
why even have judges; the legislature is in charge