{"id":1486943,"date":"2022-05-21T15:30:13","date_gmt":"2022-05-21T19:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1486943"},"modified":"2022-05-21T15:30:20","modified_gmt":"2022-05-21T19:30:20","slug":"he-spent-33-years-in-jail-for-a-rape-he-didnt-commit-because-prosecutors-didnt-turn-over-evidence-his-sentence-was-just-vacated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/he-spent-33-years-in-jail-for-a-rape-he-didnt-commit-because-prosecutors-didnt-turn-over-evidence-his-sentence-was-just-vacated\/","title":{"rendered":"He Spent 33 Years In Jail For A Rape He Didn\u2019t Commit Because Prosecutors Didn\u2019t Turn Over Evidence. His Sentence Was Just Vacated."},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">46<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fhe-spent-33-years-in-jail-for-a-rape-he-didnt-commit-because-prosecutors-didnt-turn-over-evidence-his-sentence-was-just-vacated%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1486943&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/dw-wp-production.imgix.net\/2022\/05\/GettyImages-91698461-1.jpg?w=1200&#038;h=800&#038;ixlib=react-9.3.0\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p>Edward Clayton Taylor spent 33 years in prison and 36 years believed to be a child rapist after he was convicted of raping 4-year-old Stephanie McIntyre Love in 1986.<\/p>\n<p>Taylor, now 57, always maintained his innocent, even pointing out that at the time he had a 4-year-old daughter and would never do such a thing. His innocence didn\u2019t matter, and he was convicted of child rape. The Florida parole board granted him in 2019, but a judge on Friday vacated his conviction, finally removing him from Florida\u2019s sex offender registry.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI want to relax. I want to breathe air as a free man,\u201d Taylor told reporters after his conviction was overturned.<\/p>\n<p>Love\u2019s rape was only discovered after she told her mother that \u201cher butt was sore,\u201d and a doctor examination determined she had gonorrhea.<\/p>\n<p>At the time of the investigation, 4-year-old Love told investigators that her friend\u2019s father, whom she referred to as \u201cJermaine\u2019s Daddy\u201d was the man who raped her, but she also said Jermaine had either \u201ctwo daddies\u201d or \u201cthree daddies.\u201d One of the men she incorrectly referred to was Taylor, who at the time was living with his mother and two brothers, all of whom were around the same age and looked similar.<\/p>\n<p>The Florida Times-Union <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jacksonville.com\/story\/news\/courts\/2022\/05\/20\/jacksonville-man-absolved-he-deemed-child-rapist-decades\/9847029002\/\">reported<\/a> in other interviews, Love said the man who raped her was her friend\u2019s \u201cdaddy\u201d who was a neighbor. That friend\u2019s father was Taylor, but he testified that his 18-year old uncle had \u201cplayed house\u201d with Love on his bunkbed. His testimony was not allowed at trial, First Coast News <a href=\"https:\/\/www.firstcoastnews.com\/article\/news\/crime\/jacksonville-man-edward-clayton-taylor-exonerated-in-1986-child-rape-case\/77-29cb86bc-aeab-474a-982f-995e28ad22c7\">reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Love, who is white, was brought in and shown numerous photos of black men, including a photo of Taylor and one of his brothers, but not the other. As First Coast News reported, Taylor fell victim to \u201cthe (now well-documented) pitfalls of cross-racial eyewitness identification.\u201d When Love was shown the photos, she told investigators that the men in the photos \u201call look the same to me. I can\u2019t tell the difference between these men.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Love\u2019s identification was the only evidence used to convict Taylor. Love spoke on Taylor\u2019s behalf at the hearing on Friday, saying she knows he didn\u2019t rape her. She had also written a statement to the Florida Parole Commission and twice testified in support of releasing Taylor from prison.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was four years old, unsure and scared when I identified Edward Taylor,\u201d she wrote in her statement to the parole board. \u201cI felt very pressured by detectives and [others] to identify the perpetrator\u2019s photo in the photo array that was shown to me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Medical records showed Taylor had never had gonorrhea, but his younger brother did. First Coast News reported that the younger brother, identified as Ithemas by the Times-Union, had been diagnosed with the venereal disease. Ithemas\u2019 photo had not been included in the photos shown to Love. Ithemas, according to First Coast News, was \u201clater arrested for sexually molesting four young girls in Brunswick, Ga. in a similar fashion. (He was not prosecuted in that case, but is currently serving a life sentence for armed robbery).\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Attorneys for the Innocence Project of Florida worked on overturning Taylor\u2019s conviction, and were able to provide new evidence and show that prosecutors failed to turn over exculpatory evidence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Edward Clayton Taylor spent 33 years in prison and 36 years believed to be a child rapist after he was convicted of raping 4-year-old Stephanie McIntyre Love in 1986.Taylor, now<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":126,"featured_media":1486955,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1486943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1486943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/126"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1486943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1486943\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1486955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1486943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1486943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1486943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}