Flostine Taylor had planned to say something to Jermorris Pilcher after a Leflore County jury convicted Pilcher of murder in her only son’s death.
She wanted to tell Pilcher – who was sentenced to life in prison – that she forgave him. But when she saw people weeping on both sides of the courtroom Friday night, she declined the court’s offer to address Pilcher.
“I just didn’t want to upset anybody anymore,” an emotional Taylor said Saturday. “I felt sorry for (Pilcher) ever since I set foot in that courtroom and saw he was just a child. It was just a child that murdered my child.
“He’s being taken away from his family just like my son was taken from me. I hate to see that.”
Pilcher, 22, was convicted Friday of shooting Michael Taylor at Delta Apartments on Browning Road during the early hours of July 14, 2006.
It took the jury of nine women and three men a little over three hours to announce the guilty verdict.
Pilcher was given life imprisonment by Circuit Judge Margaret Carey-McCray.
“It’s a closure for me,” said Flostine Taylor, who sat through the three-day trial. “I hate the fact that he shot my only son for nothing; it was for nothing. My son never did nothing to him.”
Taylor, who at the time of the murder was 22 years old and two weeks out of Parchman penitentiary, was shot in the back while ascending the stairs that led to his sister’s apartment in Delta Apartments. He was talking on his cellular telephone at the time of the murder and, according to witnesses, never knew Pilcher was taking aim at him.
“He was out there lying in wait, waiting on his prey,” District Attorney Dewayne Richardson told jurors while pointing at Pilcher. “Now he has to take his medicine. And I ask you to give it to him.”
Taylor’s sister, Christine Taylor, found her brother bleeding on the stairwell. She said he spent his dying breaths calling out for his mother and sister.
According to state witness Cordell Taylor, a festering dispute between rival gangs – the Broad Street N****** and The D.A. (Delta Apartments) – may have led to Michael Taylor’s murder.
“It had been going on,” Cordell Taylor said of the rivalry.
He testified that roughly one month before Michael Taylor’s shooting death, Pilcher had announced to a group of people at Triple Stop on Carrollton Avenue, “Who wanna fight?”
“When I walked out of the store, (Pilcher) swung on me and jumped back in the car,” Cordell Taylor said.
The prosecution claimed that that altercation – which led to gunfire and took place while Michael Taylor was incarcerated – ultimately led to the murder.
Though he associated with a group of friends from Broad Street, Flostine Taylor said her son “didn’t have nothing to do with those gangs.” When he was released from prison, Taylor moved into his sister’s home in Delta Apartments, unknowingly becoming a target in an ongoing gang dispute.
“He moved out of the environment that had gotten him ingrained in the prison system,” Marvin Sanders, assistant district attorney, told jurors. “But once he moved to the D.A., he became public enemy number one.”
On Saturday, Richardson said the murder was “unnecessary.”
“It’s senseless when you consider that both of these young men were from the same town but different neighborhoods,” said Richardson. “It ruins not only the family of the victim, but the family of the defendant also.”
While the jury was deliberating, the prosecution offered Pilcher and his attorney, David Holly, a plea bargain — manslaughter, with 25 years in prison. Pilcher declined the offer.
