During a 2001 robbery, William Kenneth Taylor shot the victim in the face after beating her brother.
By SHANNONCOLAVECCHIO-VAN SICKLER
Published June 15, 2004
TAMPA - William Kenneth Taylor showed no emotion Monday when jurors unanimously recommended he die for the 2001 murder of a Riverview woman and the near-fatal beating of her brother.
But across the courtroom, the victims' father smiled.
"I feel great," said William Maddox Sr. "It's finally over."
The jury's recommendation to Circuit Judge Barbara Fleischer came after two hours of deliberation. The same jury last week found Taylor guilty of first-degree murder, attempted robbery and armed burglary.
Fleischer hasn't set a date for sentencing Taylor, who has been incarcerated for 23 of his 45 years for crimes dating back to his adolescence in Delaware.
"I'm just happy if he never, ever gets out of jail," said Renate Sikes, the victims' mother. "But I am glad if he gets the death penalty. He deserves it."
State prosecutors on Monday told jurors that the robbery and brutal attack on 42-year-old Sandra Kushmer and her younger brother, William Maddox Jr., was just the latest in a series of violent crimes by Taylor.
Jurors heard from Lily Stewart, who was robbed in 1976 by Taylor when the two worked at a casino and hotel in Jackpot, Nev. Stewart testified that Taylor knocked her across the room and ran off with $30. Taylor was convicted of burglary for that crime.
Margaret Koluck, testifying by videotape, recalled how Taylor shot her in 1976 as she sat drinking a Pepsi in her Delaware home. Taylor was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon for the attack on Koluck, now 83.
Prosecutor Scott Harmon called Taylor a "cold-blooded," calculating criminal who killed Kushmer in May 2001 only because he wanted to steal Maddox's wallet.
"Murder for money, that's why Sandra Kushmer's life ended," Harmon said. "William Taylor wasn't a victim. He made these decisions."
Renate Sikes found her children on May 26, when she returned to her Riverview home from the hospital where she had been visiting her sick husband.
Prosecutors said Taylor was with Kushmer and Maddox the night before at Harry's Bar in Riverview. Taylor drove the two to the Sikes home because they'd had too much to drink. There, Taylor beat Maddox and shot Kushmer in the face. Maddox, 40 at the time, was severely brain-damaged. Three years after the attack, he still cannot spell, said assistant state attorney Pam Bondi.
Taylor's attorneys portrayed him as a troubled man who grew up in an abusive home where both parents drank too much. They called in a neurologist and psychologist, who cited childhood medical records and more recent evaluations as proof Taylor had psychological problems. They said tests showed damage to the frontal lobe of Taylor's brain, the area that deals with self control and decision-making.
"Giving William Taylor a life in prison is not making excuses, it is not forgiving his actions," public defender Deborah Goins told the jury.
Then she read a line from a poem: Search the sorrow for a sign of mercy in this maze.
Two hours later, the jury came back with its 12-0 recommendation for the death penalty.
