USA - Missouri. The Missouri Supreme Court has overturned the death sentence of Michael D. Taylor

The Missouri Supreme Court has overturned the death sentence of Michael D. Taylor, convicted of killing his prison cellmate, ruling that jurors at his 1st trial never heard critical evidence in deciding his punishment. Taylor entered prison in 1998 on a life sentence for the 1995 rape, beating and drowning of a classmate, Christine Smetzer. Both Taylor and Smetzer were 15 years old at the time of the killing. In 1999, Taylor was accused of strangling Shackrein Thomas, a fellow inmate at Potosi Correctional Center. Taylor was convicted in 2003 of 1st-degree murder in Thomas' strangulation, and the Supreme Court today upheld the conviction. But the court ordered a new punishment proceeding, finding in part that prosecutors improperly withheld evidence including letters from a prison informant that showed a pattern of deceit, and  for failing to delve deeply enough during the penalty phase into his history of mental health problems. Taylor had admitted to an investigator that he strangled his cellmate because "father" from the "dark side" instructed him to "send" Thomas to him.