Judge decides jail best for Taylor

On lawyers’ concerns, boxer to get State Hospital review

A Pulaski County sheriff’s deputy serves boxer Jermain Taylor with a second-degree battery warrant after a Friday court appearance as bailiff Lynn Berry escorts Taylor to a holding area at the county courthouse in Little Rock.
A Pulaski County sheriff’s deputy serves boxer Jermain Taylor with a second-degree battery warrant after a Friday court appearance as bailiff Lynn Berry escorts Taylor to a holding area at the county courthouse in Little Rock.

Jermain Taylor was jailed indefinitely Friday by court order after his attorneys told Pulaski County Circuit Judge Leon Johnson the latest allegations of violence had caused them to question the boxer's mental health.

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Boxer Jermain Taylor is served a second-degree battery warrant after appearing in court on Friday, May 29, 2015.

Jermain Taylor served warrant

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The 36-year-old Taylor was booked in the Pulaski County jail on his latest charge, second-degree battery, about an hour after Friday's hearing. He's accused of punching a fellow patient at the rehabilitation program where he's been enrolled since March.

Including the new counts, the felony charges against him now stand at nine in three cases, including five counts of aggravated assault, two counts of terroristic threatening and first-degree battery.

Taylor was arrested over accusations he shot his cousin in August at his North Little Rock home and, while free on bond, fired a gun while threatening a family of five in January outside his Little Rock gym after the city's Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. parade.

Johnson jailed Taylor after the parade accusations but allowed him to get inpatient treatment at Rivendell Behavioral Health Services hospital in Bryant. He returned to jail but then was allowed to leave to go to a rehabilitation program in March.

The judge said Taylor will remain jailed this time until the State Hospital takes custody to conduct a mental examination to determine whether he was in his right mind at the time of the crimes he is accused of committing.

The process, including scheduling interviews with doctors and psychological testing, is likely to take weeks, possibly months, and Taylor will be returned to jail after the evaluation. The legal proceedings cannot move forward until the question of Taylor's mental health is resolved, and that decision will be made by the judge.

Given the new accusation, Taylor's lawyers requested the mental evaluation to make sure every possible defense to the charges against him is explored, Jimmy Morris told the judge, even though "My client may not want it."

Another Taylor attorney, Hubert Alexander, told the judge the lawyers had initially attributed his anger impulses to substance abuse.

But with the battery accusation arising from circumstances in which Taylor presumably was not under the influence, his legal team needed to explore the possibility that the boxer is mentally ill and might not be criminally liable for any wrongdoing, Alexander said.

Alexander said he had not questioned Taylor's mental health earlier in the proceedings out of concern over how it might affect Taylor's boxing career.

After a 25-month career hiatus because of a serious concussion from an October 2009 bout, Taylor returned to professional boxing in December 2011.

He had lined up a middleweight title bout about two weeks before the August shooting that wounded his cousin and recaptured that championship by winning in October.

He subsequently lost that title in February after suffering a rib fracture during training in January. The injury prevented him from defending the title.

His second arrest, three days after the rib injury, came over accusations he had threatened a Little Rock couple and their three children while he fired a gun after the city parade.

Taylor has already been examined once by state doctors, but that was to determine whether he could assist his lawyers.

The judge ordered those findings sealed even though the Legislature in 2013 rewrote the standards for mental evaluations for criminal defendants, Arkansas Code 5-2-305, and specifically designated those reports to be public records.

Senior deputy prosecutor John Johnson had petitioned the judge to take the former Olympic athlete into custody after the altercation at the rehabilitation center.

But the judge said he wasn't jailing Taylor because prosecutors had asked him to, but rather out of concern that Taylor might be a danger to himself or others. The judge said he had received reports that Taylor has not been following rules while in treatment.

"My concern is, this is not the first report I've gotten about what's going on at the facility," he said. "I'm sure he has not complied with all of the rules."

Morris, one of the Taylor attorneys, disputed that Taylor had been acting up but declined an offer by the judge to call staff members from the program, Oasis Renewal Center on Cooper Orbit Road, to testify about Taylor's behavior.

Morris also questioned the validity of the battery case Friday.

Taylor was not arrested when the May 13 altercation was reported. No one saw Taylor hit the man, 29-year-old Jason Isaac Condon of Little Rock, and Condon told sheriff's deputies said he couldn't remember what had happened.

But Condon has since "hired a lawyer who can remember everything," Morris told the judge.

Taylor did not speak during the 15-minute proceeding, his seventh circuit court appearance since his first arrest in August after his cousin was shot.

Court filings show his Vintage Drive home is empty and has had the electricity and water cut off after his arrest in January. Mortgage payments are delinquent, and more than $1 million is owed on the home, mostly from tax liens and three mortgages, and the house is cross-collateralized with other properties. Taylor has "no significant income" and none is expected while he is incarcerated.

Those disclosures are contained in a petition by Taylor's estranged wife to the judge in their divorce case to get permission to sell the home to a buyer ready to pay $900,000 for the gated two-story 4,280-square-foot house on 39 acres just outside Maumelle and North Little Rock.

An effort to sell the home last year drew no interest, and the property was appraised at $1 million in 2013, according to the petition.

But the offer had a May 15 deadline, and court and real estate records do not indicate a sale was made.

"The sale of this property would satisfy a significant amount of debt for the parties and leave them in a position of a positive net worth," the petition states. "If the sale does not occur, then a foreclosure is likely."

Metro on 05/30/2015

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