Another court tape mysteriously vanishes: Disappearance could impact Taylor’s criminal conviction
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The defendant, Rongie Taylor, is asking the court to reconsider his guilty plea to the charge of robbery, entered in 2000. He is presently serving a five-year sentence.
However, delaying hearing of his motion for post-conviction relief is the revelation the audio tape of his Sept. 25, 2000 plea cannot be found. It is the second tape in recent months to disappear in regard to a criminal case.
Earlier, a tape in the trial of convicted armed robber Abel Torres could not be found. Torres was convicted in 2000 for shooting a clerk outside Pit Stop North during a botched robbery attempt. He was given 36 years after he was transferred from juvenile court to stand trial as an adult. He was 16 at the time of the crime.
While the loss of the Torres tape has caused a delay in the appeal, the court of appeals appeared to be more agitated with the Torres’ defense than with the loss of the tape. The appellate court pointed out the public defender’s office did not mention the lost tape until recently, prompting the appellate court to threaten to dismiss the appeal.
While the Torres conviction may not be set aside due to the missing tape, Taylor’s attorney, Lisa Zavogiannis, maintains the tape in her client’s case is key to determining if he understood what he was doing when he entered a guilty plea. Zavogiannis said she will pursue the matter of the missing tape on her client’s behalf.
The missing Taylor tape reportedly contains audio of his plea before Circuit Court Judge Charles Haston. The defense maintains Taylor entered the plea under advice of his former attorney, Bart Stanley. However, Taylor now says he is not guilty and only entered a plea to avoid a possible longer jail sentence had he gone to trial.
During a hearing last week, Taylor maintained he had only met the co-defendants a day before the knife-point robbery of a Francis Ferry woman. It was later determined the robbery was perpetrated by friends of the victim’s husband’s ex-wife, Connie Cravens. The other defendants, William Thomas Ramsey and Freddie Alton Myers, were both given nine-year sentences.
Taylor now says he was asleep in the car when the other two men entered the victim’s house and committed the robbery and had no idea what was going on. His story was backed up by his co-defendants who testified last week Taylor did not participate in the crime.
Given the recent revelation, Taylor believes his conviction should be reconsidered.
As for the missing tape, no one was able to provide an answer as to why the tape cannot be located. Court records show Taylor was the only case on the docket the day of his plea, meaning his plea could be on a tape by itself if it was ever taped. Zavogiannis says the audio tape could be key to showing her client did not understand what he was getting into when he entered the plea.