“AN IRREVERSIBLE INJUSTICE”: MISSOURI EXECUTES LEONARD “RAHEEM” TAYLOR DESPITE DOUBTS OVER HIS GUILT – By Liliana Segura and Jordan Smith (The Intercept) / Feb 8, 2023
Taylor, who insisted on his innocence, was killed by lethal injection while litigation was still pending.
TRICIA ROJO BUSHNELL was on hold with the prison in Bonne Terre, Missouri, waiting to talk to Leonard “Raheem” Taylor. Executive director of the Midwest Innocence Project, Rojo Bushnell was calling to update Taylor on litigation related to his execution, which was scheduled for 6 p.m. on Tuesday. Taylor had been in a holding cell, the prison official told Rojo Bushnell, but now she couldn’t get through. Rojo Bushnell could hear someone talking in the background just before the prison official came back on the line “and said, ‘I’m sorry, ma’am. It’s done.’ And I said, ‘Done?’ And she said yes. And I clarified, ‘You mean the execution process is done?’ And she said yes.”
Rojo Bushnell was sitting in a Huddle House diner down the street from the prison. She’d been there all day with Megan Crane, co-director of the MacArthur Justice Center’s Missouri office, working on Taylor’s case. Rojo Bushnell realized that as she was waiting on hold, the execution was already underway. At 6:16 p.m. Taylor was pronounced dead.
Taylor was executed for the 2004 murder of his girlfriend, Angela Rowe, and her three young children in Jennings, a suburb of St. Louis. Taylor had always maintained his innocence. He was nearly 2,000 miles away when the bodies were found inside the home he shared with Rowe, shot in the head. Police seized on Taylor as their sole suspect, pursuing witnesses to confirm their theory of the crime while ignoring evidence to the contrary. At Taylor’s trial, the prosecution relied on a dubious statement provided by Taylor’s brother, Perry — a statement Perry had vociferously recanted — and on testimony from a medical examiner who dramatically changed his estimated time of death in order to implicate Taylor.
CONTINUE > https://theintercept.com/2023/02/08/missouri-executes-leonard-raheem-taylor/
