BATON ROUGE — Jeremiah Taylor is competent to go to trial in the March rape of an elderly woman, a judge ruled Tuesday, but Taylor was still able to plead both not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity.
The competence ruling deals with whether Taylor is able to understand the charges against him and assist his lawyer in his defense. The pleas deal with the possibility that he was not sane at the time of the crimes.
Taylor, 22, is accused of first-degree rape, cruelty to the infirm and obscenity in the March 5 attack on a 94-year-old woman outside her house. The court hearing Tuesday included another charge of obscenity and a charge of sexual battery connected to a Jan. 18 incident where he is accused of exposing himself to a woman at a laundromat and groping her.
The hearing did not take up another batch of charges connected to three sexual assaults of the same woman in 2023 and 2024. The 2024 charges were dropped after prosecutors lost contact with the victim. They were able to get in touch with the woman after Taylor’s March arrest and pursue the charges. The 2023 case was added later.
Taylor will appear before a different judge to be arraigned on those charges this coming Monday, according to court records.
Prosecutor Sonya Cardia-Porter told state District Judge Tarvald Smith on Tuesday that three doctors had evaluated Taylor’s competence. Two concluded that he was competent to stand trial and one did not.
Cardia-Porter told Smith that the doctor who concluded Taylor was not competent examined him shortly after his arrest and before he was given psychiatric medication.
The other doctors examined him later and found that he understood the charges; the roles of prosecutor, judge and defense attorney; and the serious nature of the charges against him. He told one doctor that if convicted he “would never see outside again,” Cardia-Porter read from one of the reports.
Defense attorney Rob Ray of the public defender’s office countered that Taylor was not taking psychiatric medications now and has had some misunderstandings of the legal system.
Ray cited one doctor’s report that Taylor had said that if he could afford to pay a private attorney, he would be able to “go free.”
Smith said that while he and others in the court system recognize that the attorneys in the public defender’s office are among the “most skillful and expert in the parish,” people whose understanding of the court system comes from news and entertainment media frequently hold the same view Taylor expressed.
Cardia-Porter said that the doctors’ reports included statements from Taylor that he would take his attorney’s advice about whether it would be better to plead guilty or take the case to trial.
“He is not easily led, easily swayed,” she said.
Ray asked the court to have the doctor who concluded that he was incompetent re-evaluate his condition.
Judge Smith ruled that Taylor was competent to stand trial.
“I’m drawn to his knowledge of the process,” Smith said, referring to one doctor’s report that Taylor said that if there is evidence against him, it might be better to plead guilty, and that he would rely on his attorney’s expertise in evaluating those options.
That kind of understanding “leads this court to believe he is well-equipped” to work with his attorney, Smith said.
Ray objected to the ruling, in part out of concern for the doctors’ varying evaluations.
“Competence is something that is fluid,” he said.
Smith told Ray that Taylor could still enter the dual not guilty/not guilty by reason of insanity pleas. He also told Ray that if Taylor’s mental condition deteriorates, he could renew the request for an examination of Taylor’s competence.
At Cardia-Porter’s request, Smith ordered Taylor held without bond and ordered that he remain in East Baton Rouge Parish Prison so he will be able to meet easily with his attorney.
Ray said that being held without bond may make Taylor ineligible for some prison-based education and other personal development programs. The judge responded that if Taylor encounters that problem, “I can order the prison to allow him to participate.”
Taylor will return to Smith’s court in July for a motions hearing.
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