A state appeals court panel has rejected a bid for re-sentencing by one of two men convicted of the kidnapping, carjacking and murder of a Woodland Hills resident who had just arrived home from the grocery store in his luxury Bentley automobile.
The three-justice panel from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal wrote in a ruling released Wednesday that Kirell Taylor “targeted” Christopher Rawlings and “punched or pushed him into submission alongside the co-perpetrator and placed Rawlings in the trunk rather than, say, allowing him to ride in the passenger compartment or simply leaving him in the garage.”
The panel noted that “substantial” evidence supports the trial court’s findings that Taylor fled from a subsequent crash scene with items looted from Rawlings’ home “without even a cursory attempt to check on Rawlings and proceeded to violently carjack another victim.”
Taylor, now 49, is serving a life prison sentence without the possibility of parole for the Feb. 8, 1999, attack on the 30-year-old victim, who died two days later.
The defendant was convicted in October 2001 of charges including first-degree murder, carjacking, kidnapping, robbery, burglary and evading an officer causing death. Jurors also found true the special-circumstance allegations of murder during the commission of a carjacking, kidnapping, burglary and robbery.
Co-defendant Boris George Graham was tried separately and sentenced in October 2007 to life in prison without the possibility of parole after being convicted of the same charges. Jurors also found true the same four special circumstance allegations against him.
Rawlings was abducted from the garage of his home and forced into the trunk of his luxury automobile.
The victim’s wife thought something was wrong and saw her husband being robbed by two men in ski masks, then ran back inside to grab the couple’s two young children and call police.
Officers caught up nearby with the Bentley, which crashed into a small car and then struck a power pole and a tree nearby, according to the appellate court panel’s 36-page ruling. Rawlings, who had been thrown from the trunk, was found unconscious with serious injuries to his head and face and ultimately died at a hospital, the justices noted.
As his luxury car caught fire, the abductors fled in different directions in the dark. Taylor offered $1,000 for a ride and eventually carjacked a woman to get out of the area, a prosecutor said soon after his conviction.
Taylor was in county jail for a probation violation when he was linked to the crimes against Rawlings.
Graham, now 54, was taken into custody in January 2004 in Hollywood, Fla. He had been profiled twice on the television show “America’s Most Wanted,” prompting a tipster to report that Graham was living somewhere in south Florida.
Both defendants claimed that they were wrongly implicated in the slaying. Taylor contended that police planted saliva from a DNA sample taken from him onto a ski mask recovered from the Bentley, according to the appellate court panel’s ruling.