High court denies appeal of death-row inmate who said prosecutors tried to pick only Mormon jurors

SALT LAKE CITY — The state's high court Tuesday upheld a lower court's decision denying a death row inmate's appeal.

Von Lester Taylor, who is pursuing a third appeal of the death sentence handed to him by a jury in 1991, raised arguments that prosecutors were fixated with religion and tried to choose only LDS jurors for the panel that weighed whether he should be sentenced to death or receive life in prison.

Utah Supreme Court Justice Jill Parrish issued an opinion affirming the dismissal of Taylor's relief petition after finding that such a claim and others were legally prohibited from being raised.

Taylor's attorney argued in June that new evidence showed prosecutors attempted to choose jurors belonging to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and eliminate those who weren't members of the church. But the state's five justices determined that the prosecutors' notes showing a juror ranking system didn't qualify as newly discovered evidence.

"That is, the factual basis for Taylor’s claim was discoverable in past proceedings, the evidence is merely cumulative, and the evidence does not create reasonable doubt as to Taylor’s guilt," Parrish wrote. "Accordingly, we hold that the prosecutor’s notes do not qualify as newly discovered evidence and that Taylor’s claim that the prosecution struck potential jurors based on their religious affiliation is procedurally barred."

In 1990, Taylor and Edward Steven Deli broke into an Oakley cabin belonging to the Tiede family after having run from a halfway house.

Police say Taylor emptied his gun into the backs of Beth Potts, 70, and her 49-year-old daughter, Kaye Tiede. The two then shot Rolf Tiede, 51, kidnapped two of his daughters, then fled in a vehicle after setting the cabin on fire.

Court documents show that Taylor ordered Rolf Tiede to remove his clothes, took $150 from his wallet, and then shot him. For a while, Tiede played dead, but Taylor returned and shot him point blank in the head, doused him with gasoline and set him and the cabin on fire. Rolf Tiede survived the ordeal.

Taylor pleaded guilty to two counts of capital murder. A jury then decided he should be put to death. Deli, however, took his case to trial. One juror refused to convict him of capital murder and he was instead convicted of lesser second-degree murder charges and sentenced to life in prison.

This was Taylor's second post-conviction relief petition, according to the ruling, and was based on 30 different claims, all of which were dismissed in the district court. Taylor challenged the dismissal of 12 of those points.

— Emiley Morgan Twitter: DNewsCrimeTeam