KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Missouri Gov. Mike Parson announced Monday that the state will carry out the execution of Leonard “Raheem” Taylor as scheduled on Tuesday.
"Leonard Taylor brutally murdered a mother and her three children," Parson said in a statement Monday confirming the decision. “The evidence shows Taylor committed these atrocities and a jury found him guilty. Courts have consistently upheld Taylor’s convictions and sentences under the facts and the Missouri and United States Constitutions.”
Taylor, 45, was convicted of murdering his girlfriend, Angela Rowe, and her three children — Alexus Conley, 10; AcQreya Conley, 6; and Tyrese Conley, 5 — in 2004, but he maintains his innocence.
He was convicted of four counts of first-degree murder and four counts of armed criminal action.
The bodies weren’t discovered until Dec. 3 and Taylor had boarded a flight from St. Louis to Ontario, California.
He claims Rowe and the Conley children were alive when he left her residence.
Taylor’s daughter and her mother are among those who claim he wasn’t in the state at the time of the shootings, but the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office declined to vacate the conviction under a new Missouri law that has been used to exonerate others, including Kevin Strickland.
“We are not filing a motion to vacate Leonard Taylor's sentence,” St. Louis County prosecutor Wesley Bell said in a statement last week. “The facts are not there to support a credible case of innocence.”
Parson rehashed evidence in the case — including an alleged call to his brother, DNA evidence and other circumstantial evidence — in announcing that the execution would go forward.
"Despite his self-serving claim of innocence, the facts of his guilt in this gruesome quadruple homicide remain,” Parson said. “The State of Missouri will carry out Taylor’s sentences according to the Court's order and deliver justice for the four innocent lives he stole."
After flying to California, Taylor was eventually tracked down “hiding on the floorboards of a car while leaving another girlfriend’s home in Kentucky,” Parson’s office said.
While Bell’s office opted against filing an innocence claim, his office did say it would “support a stay of execution if Mr. Taylor asks for one so his counsel may further investigate the time that the victims died.”
The Midwest Innocence Project and NAACP are among the groups who have called for an investigation into Taylor’s innocence claims.
The Missouri Supreme Court declined to intervene and Parson’s office will not grant a reprieve and also cited his prior criminal history in announcing the decision.
“Taylor has two prior forcible rape convictions, underscoring a history of violent acts against women,” Parson’s office said in a statement.
Missouri became the first state thought to have executed a transgender woman last month when Parson similarly refused to halt Amber McLaughlin’s execution.
—
