CORY TAYLOR - 2 months (2009) - Fort Walton Beach FL

Steven Allen Taylor faces life in prison after being found guilty
Friday of first-degree felony murder.
A jury of 10 men and two women sided with prosecutors in determining
Taylor had shaken his son, 2-month-old Cory Taylor, violently enough to
cause his death.
Taylor, 20, was also found guilty of aggravated child abuse.
He will be sentenced at 9 a.m., June 1, but the murder charge carries
a mandatory life sentence.
Members of Taylor’s family wailed uncontrollably as the verdict was
read.
Cory’s mother, Brittney Beavar-Wiley, was led from the courtroom by
bailiff’s when her outburst interrupted the court proceedings.
Assistant State Attorney Bobby Elmore called the events surrounding
Cory Taylor’s death “tragic.”
“This is a tragic case, as all homicide cases are tragic,” Elmore
said.
He said the Taylor case was particularly troubling in that a
2-month-old child lost his life and a family was ripped apart “by a few
seconds of anger.”
Taylor was taken into custody Jan. 22, 2009, just hours after he’d
brought the unconscious infant from his home on Denton Boulevard to Fort
Walton Beach Medical Center’s emergency room.
Doctors noticed bleeding behind Cory’s eyes and became suspicious of
Taylor’s story that his son had fallen under the water in the bathtub
and then stopped breathing.
The child was put on life support, but died April 18 without
regaining consciousness.
Elmore called in a handful of medical experts during the week-long
trial.
Some had examined Cory Taylor’s body and others professed knowledge
in shaken baby syndrome.
Elmore noted in closing arguments Friday that all the experts had
confirmed the same cause of death for the infant.
“Shaking with blunt impact. Abusive head trauma,” Elmore repeated
three times, quoting the experts. “All of them say that the evidence is
that that child was shaken, that child was impacted, causing a fracture,
and that child died as a result.”
Taylor’s attorney, Clint Davis, was not available for comment after
the verdict. But outside the courtroom he told an inconsolable
Beavar-Wiley that he intended to “keep on fighting” on Taylor’s behalf.
Davis presented his own version of events to jurors Friday during his
closing argument.
He reminded the jurors that doctors had determined Cory had suffered a
temporal lobe fracture.
He tried to convince the panel that the child had shown signs of
being sickly, perhaps as a result from whatever injury had resulted in
the temporal lobe fracture.
Davis argued that there was no direct evidence of Steve Taylor
physically abusing the child or evidence of him ever hurting anyone.
“It’s the evidence. It’s the evidence that you must look at in this
trial,” he said.
Davis argued that perhaps Cory had died from an injury that couldn’t
be detected, but had proved fatal over time.
Davis also questioned the credibility of a couple of the expert
witnesses Elmore had brought in to testify.

Convicted April 9 of shaking his infant son to death, Steven
Taylor was sentenced Tuesday to serve life in prison without parole.
Circuit Court Judge Terry Ketchel sat through a lengthy motion for a
new trial hearing before passing the sentence, which he was bound by
state law to impose on the first-degree felony murder conviction.
“The court has no discretion,” Ketchel said. “Based on a conviction
in court of a first-degree felony, I am required to issue a sentence of
life imprisonment without parole.”
Taylor, 20, accepted the plea without noticeable reaction, but the
same could not be said of the late infant’s mother, Brittney
Beavar-Wiley.
Beavar-Wiley first laid into prosecutor Bobby Elmore with a
foul-mouthed tirade.
A witness said that after being forcefully removed from the courtroom
by a bailiff, Beavar-Wiley turned on Clint Davis, who had defended
Taylor.
Outside the Shalimar courthouse annex, Beavar-Wiley directed an
expletive-laden diatribe at a reporter.
“You’re the one who wrote that (expletive) (expletive),” she said.
Ketchel also sentenced Taylor to 25 years in prison for aggravated
child abuse. That sentence will run concurrent to the life sentence.
Two-month-old Cory Taylor died April 18, 2009, three months after
suffering an acute skull fracture which caused his brain to hemorrhage
and his tiny body to go into cardiac arrest.
Taylor rushed his son to the hospital, but doctors didn’t buy his
story that the child had slipped under the water in his bathtub and
later stopped breathing.
Prosecution experts testified at trial that Cory Taylor’s death
appeared to have been caused by “shaking with blunt trauma.” The infant,
Elmore argued, had died as a result of what is known as shaken baby
syndrome.
After Tuesday’s hearing, Elmore shrugged off the abuse he’d taken
from Beavar-Wiley and lamented the sad circumstances leading up to the
sentencing.
“A baby’s dead, and unfortunately a young man ruined his life in a
fit of anger,” he said. “It’s unfortunate, but that’s the law.”