Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita’s team has defeated an effort by a vicious killer to overturn his conviction for the murder of a young mother in her home.
Rokita
“Even the worst criminals get their day in court,” AG Rokita said. “Our job, though, is to make sure that the outcome of that process is justice for their victims. We pursue that mission with the utmost of seriousness, and all Hoosiers are safer because we consistently succeed in keeping violent felons locked away.”
Amid a frenzied crime spree on Nov. 10, 2015, Larry Taylor and two other men watched from afar as Amanda Blackburn’s husband, Pastor Davey Blackburn, left the family’s home shortly after 6 a.m.
The trio then broke into the home with the intent to commit robbery – at which time they encountered Amanda Blackburn and her toddler son. At the time, Amanda Blackburn was pregnant with the family’s second child.
Taylor’s two accomplices left the home to withdraw money from an ATM using Amanda Blackburn’s debit card. Alone with the woman and child, Taylor attempted to forcibly have sexual intercourse with the pregnant 28-year-old woman. When she resisted, Taylor shot her in the head, back and arm – and watched her as she lay on the floor, helpless and bleeding. When the two accomplices returned from the bungled bank trip, Taylor casually remarked that he “watched [Amanda] bleed out.”
Taylor appealed his murder conviction on the premise that a police officer asked him several questions before reading him his Miranda rights.
AG Rokita’s team successfully showed that, as the appellate court stated in its decision, Taylor’s pre-Miranda statements “were not admitted into evidence during the trial” and “even if Taylor’s statements had been admitted, any error would have been harmless” because of “overwhelming evidence” outside of those statements.
AG Rokita thanked his team – particularly Deputy Attorney General Megan Smith – for their excellent work on this case.