Taylor freed from prison

She walked into the parole hearing a prisoner of the state of Nebraska, guilty of second-degree murder.

JoAnn Taylor walked out about 25 minutes later, no longer a prisoner, no longer a killer in the eyes of the law.

She had just witnessed an extraordinary admission by the state that she was wrongly convicted of the 1985 murder of Helen Wilson in Beatrice.

In between, Taylor quietly shed tears as she listened to an accounting of the events that changed her life nearly two decades ago.

How, as a 26-year-old drug and alcohol addict, she took the stand and lied about suffocating the 68-year-old woman.

How she lied about seeing two men beat and rape Wilson, lies that helped put them behind bars.

How she lied to save herself  from the electric chair.

And how an injustice was perpetrated by the very system intended to find justice.

The state wanted her released, and parole was the fastest way to ensure Taylor didn’t spend another day in prison for a crime she didn’t commit.

“I ask this court to show mercy to her, to extend her parole, and to help Nebraska begin to heal from what has been a terrible, terrible tragedy in terms of its justice,” said Assistant Attorney General Corey O’Brien.

Before the 3-0 vote to grant parole, board Chairwoman Esther Casmer gently asked Taylor a question.

“At this point, can you tell me what’s going through your mind?”

At first, Taylor shook her head. Then she spoke in a voice that still carries the lilt of a North Carolina accent.

“It’s just been a long time coming.”

She and her five co-defendants are the first people exonerated of a crime in Nebraska using DNA testing.

Taylor, 45, won’t be completely free of the prison system -- she’ll be on parole until sometime next year.

Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning asked for the parole hearing after DNA testing of evidence from the 23-year-old crime scene identified Helen Wilson’s killer as Bruce Allen Smith, a former Beatrice resident who died in 1992.

In 1989, authorities accused Taylor and the five others in Wilson’s murder. On Friday, Bruning said the prosecutor and some investigators used the threat of the death penalty to bully false confessions from Taylor and four of her co-defendants.

Taylor declined to answer questions from reporters after Monday’s hearing.

But in an interview with the Journal Star in August, she said she falsely admitted guilt to avoid the death penalty.

Taylor said she was promised she would serve no more than 15 years in prison if she testified against her co-defendants. In addition to being coerced, she said, authorities repeatedly told her they knew who did what in the apartment, including that she used a pillow to suffocate Wilson.

Taylor’s testimony against Joseph White, the only one of the six defendants who went to trial, helped convict him of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison.

Her testimony also played a part in Thomas Winslow’s decision to plead no contest to aiding and abetting second-degree murder. He was sentenced to 10 to 50 years in prison.

“I didn’t think what was going to happen to them and I really should not have been that cold-hearted,” she said last summer, adding that she hoped the men could forgive her.

In exchange for her cooperation, Taylor was allowed to plead to the lesser charge and was sentenced to 10 to 40 years in prison. Her sentence began in 1990 and she was projected for release next summer.

Until Monday, she was at the minimum-security Omaha Community Corrections Center where she has been on work and educational release.

In October, a judge released White, 45, and Winslow, 42. They each served nearly 19 years.

The other co-defendants -- James Dean, Kathy Gonzalez and Debra Shelden -- all served four years in prison after pleading guilty to lesser charges of aiding and abetting a second-degree murder. They also cooperated with the prosecution of White.

The charges against White have been dismissed, clearing his name, O’Brien said Monday. Legally, it’s as if he were never convicted.

The attorney general is committed to helping the other five defendants receive pardons, O’Brien added.

He may not have been so eager to help had DNA evidence not matched Bruce Allen Smith.

Wilson, a widow who lived alone, was found beaten, raped and suffocated at her downtown Beatrice apartment on Feb. 6, 1985.

Authorities originally suspected Smith of the crime, but a blood test done in 1985 cleared him of involvement. At the time, DNA testing didn’t exist.

Police arrested Taylor and the others in 1989.

After their convictions, the case sat dormant until last year, when White and Winslow won a court battle to have DNA testing done on evidence from Wilson’s apartment. None of it matched any of the people convicted of the crime.

This fall, a law enforcement task force reopened the investigation.

Because Beatrice police carefully preserved blood, saliva and pubic hair samples from Smith, they were able to match his DNA with that collected from blood and semen in Wilson’s apartment.

Smith died of AIDS at age 30 in an Oklahoma City hospital. He was 22 at the time of the killing.

During the new investigation, Taylor agreed to take a polygraph test, O’Brien said. Although the results aren’t admissible in court, O’Brien said he and others were impressed by them.

“I don’t think that I’ve ever seen a suspect or defendant’s polygraph come back as cleanly as hers,” he said. “She was absolutely being truthful with us when she said that she lied  when she implicated these other individuals and that she had absolutely nothing to do with the murder of Helen Wilson.”

Taylor is from North Carolina, but she has developed a social network in Omaha. In prison, she earned her GED and has completed course work at Metropolitan Community College.

She long ago stopped using drugs and alcohol and she continues to get counseling for her personal issues, she said in August.

She is working on a degree at Bellevue University and would like to pursue a career in psychology or social work, perhaps counseling troubled women.

She will enter an Omaha program called Compassion in Action, which provides transitional housing and life-skills training to former prison inmates, said Joy Soby, community resource manager for the program.

Soby, a former inmate herself, said she has been inspired by Taylor’s life.

“I know the saying is everybody in prison is not guilty,” Soby said. “But sometimes, someone really is innocent.”