How an Illegal Sentence Came to Be
Mississippi College law professor Matthew Steffey—who serves as Reporter for the Mississippi Supreme Court Advisory Committee on Rules and the Criminal Code Reform Committee under the Administrative Office of Courts—refers to the Taylor brothers’ experience as “a confluence of unlikely factors resulting in a catastrophic error.”
The prosecutors, judge and the Taylor brothers’ own defense attorneys all failed to recognize that the sentence agreed to in the plea bargains exceeded state sentencing law.
“It's up to the judge who makes the decision about the sentence, and the judge has to operate within the confines of what the law says about what the available penalties are, but a defense lawyer should have raised the issue at the time and said, ‘This sentence is not available for this conviction,’” Sara Cohbra, Second Look Network Director of The Sentencing Project, tells A&E Crime + Investigation.
Overcrowded dockets, overworked public defenders and human error—including scriveners errors and confusion when additional charges were dropped during the plea bargaining process— may also have contributed to the situation, according to Mississippi Office of Capital Post-Conviction Counsel Executive Director Krissy Nobile, who co-authored an article for Ole Miss Law Review about post-conviction Constitutional rights, as well as her office’s amicus brief on behalf of Maurice Taylor.
“The real issue is what system—i.e., the post-conviction process—we have in place to correct mistakes once made,” Nobile tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “Our appellate courts exist to correct these kinds of fundamental wrongs, and our courts should continue to administer justice and remedy wrongs caused by the judicial system.”
Cohbra says multiple mistakes were made in the brothers’ cases, including that the classification of the drug the Taylors were convicted of selling changed after they were indicted. Drugs are classified by the Drug Enforcement Administration based on their potential for harm and abuse, with Schedule I being “highly addictive” substances.
“There are places where they talk about Schedule III drugs and then later where they talk about Schedule II drugs, even though this drug was not a Schedule II drug at the time,” Cohbra says of the Taylors’ re-sentencing process and case litigation.
Cohbra mentions specific scriveners errors that could have negatively impacted Maurice’s case: “It appears that there were a lot of repeated mistakes throughout the litigation of those two cases.”
‘A Miscarriage of Justice’
Although the illegal sentences were discovered after the Taylor brothers had already served more than the legal sentence for their crimes, they remained in prison. Procedural rules and statues of limitations for filing sentencing appeals meant that by the time the illegal sentence was discovered, it was too late for either brother to appeal their sentences.
“After someone is sentenced and as they're sitting in prison, there's a limited ability to challenge the sentence through a process called post-conviction relief, and the court has made it more and more of a one shot, limited time happening,” Steffey says.
The Taylors’ lack of access to a state-appointed lawyer for post-conviction proceedings impacted their ability to appeal, too.
“Outside of the death penalty context, Mississippi does not provide counsel for indigent defendants with post-conviction claims,” Nobile explains. “Many states do. An incarcerated indigent individual is significantly limited in their ability to properly file a post-conviction claim, let alone get a post-conviction claim heard.”
The brothers’ case proved to be an exception to the typical errors that occur within the justice system. “In 99 cases out of 100, illegal sentencing isn't remotely an issue,” Steffey says. “The small miracle here is that the governor, who is the least likely player in all of this, stepped in to address it.”
Steffey notes that the Mississippi Supreme Court spent years “dismantling and closing avenues for relief by incarcerated person” and calls the Taylors’ case a “miscarriage of justice.” In 1950’s Brooks v. State, Mississippi courts acknowledged that constitutional rights, especially in serious criminal cases “rise above mere rules of procedure,” and errors affecting those rights are exceptions to those rules. But in 2023, the court changed course with Howell v. State.
“In Howell, the court discarded the time-honored fundamental rights exception to the bars in post-conviction,” Nobile explains. “Howell is the reason Marcus Taylor was initially denied post-conviction relief. Under Howell, the court says it has no authority to protect fundamental constitutional right in post-conviction—even when those rights are violated—if a bar exists to granting relief.”
The Taylors’ case exemplifies overall issues with Mississippi’s justice system. “This wasn't an excessive sentence: it was an illegal one, so this isn't really a sentencing issue per se,” Nobile says. “The issue is: What do we do when the judicial system in some way causes a wrong? Our state’s history and tradition show that the judiciary has the authority to correct such judicial wrongs. It has only been recently, since 2023, that the judiciary has questioned its authority to correct fundamental injustices. The larger problem here is thus a post-conviction issue for Mississippi.”
Nobile hopes the Taylor brothers’ experience will lead to reform in Mississippi.
“The issue isn't the sentence, it’s the court's ability to remedy the wrong,” Nobile says. “Recent decisions by the Mississippi Supreme Court have called into question whether our appellate courts can right judicial wrongs. If our court now says it has no authority to correct such wrongs and protect fundamental rights, the legislature should step in and protect fundamental rights by amending our State’s post-conviction statute.”
Steffey adds: “This is something the Mississippi Supreme Court could re-examine tomorrow if it chose to do so.”
