Pima County Attorney Laura Conover will not drop criminal charges against Louis Taylor for his conviction in the 1970 Pioneer Hotel fire after her office βdid not find any new evidence of innocence,β she announced Wednesday.
The move is a reversal of Conoverβs previous considerations to vacate Taylorβs conviction and came the day after the countyβs Board of Supervisors held an hour-long executive session discussing the case behind closed doors.
The officeβs Conviction and Sentencing Integrity Unit has completed its review of the case, according to a news release from Conover, who said, βI have concluded that where the criminal case is concerned, I have met my ethical obligations as a prosecutor.β
Taylor served 42 years in prison after being convicted of starting the fire that killed 29 people in 1970. In 2013, he made a plea deal with then-county attorney Barbara LaWallβs office that set aside the conviction and released him from prison with time served.
At the time, LaWall insisted the move was not an exoneration. Taylor has continued to maintain his innocence.
Taylor sued Pima County and the city of Tucson in 2015 for violating his right to due process and a fair trial, alleging racism and civil conspiracy led to his arrest and conviction. The amount of compensation he is seeking is undisclosed.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2019, however, that Taylor could not collect damages for his time in prison because of the no-contest plea he made. Taylorβs lawyers have said new evidence, and evidence left out of the time of Taylorβs criminal case, permits a new hearing.
The Arizona Justice Project, which worked on Taylorβs case for more than 20 years, said in a news release Thursday, βThe Pima County Attorney has foregone a critical opportunity to correct one of the most severe injustices Pima County has ever seen.β
The release states the county attorneyβs office was βon the vergeβ of concluding Taylor was wrongly convicted, but βfor reasons never explained,β never did so.
βSince Taylorβs 1972 conviction, critical witnesses have recanted and numerous instances of intentional prosecutorial misconduct have surfaced β including hiding exculpatory evidence from the defense, extracting false testimony from juveniles threatened with incarceration, and secretly speaking with a dismissed juror mid-trial to get a handle on the juryβs leanings,β the release said. βThe case was suffused from the outset with intent to blame the βNegroβ or βColored boy.ββ
During Taylorβs trial, then-Tucson Fire Department investigator Cy Holmes said he believed the fire was set intentionally by a black teenager and that βBlacks at that point, their background was to use fire for beneficial purposes.β Taylor, who is Black, was 16 at the time of the fire.
In a news release sent out Thursday, Taylorβs attorneys also expressed dismay with the decision and said Taylor βremains confident that justice will be served.β
βMs. Conover holds herself out as a prosecuting attorney willing to correct the injustices of the past. Her decision in this case belies that and shows she is more interested in protecting the County from financial exposure resulting from her predecessorsβ misconduct,β the release said.
Taylorβs attorneys have argued throughout the civil case that the dismissal of the 2013 convictions would permit him to receive damages from the time he spent in prison. Now, Conoverβs decision wonβt give Taylor that leg up in the case.
Conover denies conflict of interest
Before Conover took office in 2021, LaWallβs team hired outside counsel to take over the Taylor civil lawsuit after finding her prosecution of the case would pose a conflict of interest.
The basis of the conflict, they said, was that Conover conducted research for one of Taylorβs parole hearings while she was in law school and discussed her dismay with how the Taylor case was handled throughout her campaign for county attorney.
Conover has said she never worked on Taylorβs case and that she didnβt know outside counsel had been hired until January, after she had already directed senior counsel in her staff to discuss settlement options in the Taylor civil case.
Conover said in a news release Wednesday: βI have never represented or participated in the representation of Mr. Taylor, whether in law school 20 years ago or sinceβ and that βThe prior administrationβs conclusions were wrong, but rather than disrupt the defense of the County in the civil lawsuit, I chose not to contest their decision after I took office.β
However, Conoverβs Facebook page shows she replied to a comment in January 2020 asking if she had met Louis Taylor, and said: βDuring law school I was able to provide a little research to prepare for one parole hearing, but it was sadly minimal as I was only a student. I felt powerless to help. That feeling has stayed with me. I still pray for Louis.β
In another Facebook comment, Conover said: βHe should have been compensated, in my humble opinion. The case caused outrage in me at an early age and has stayed with me.β
When asked to comment further on the matter, C.T. Revere, the county attorneyβs officeβs director of communications, said in an email: βWe are going to let the statement stand and not do any interviews on the final decision in this review.β
While Conover has maintained she wasnβt aware of the conflict of interest finding from her predecessorβs office, a Sept. 28 email between Conover and then-Chief Ethics Counsel Regina Nassen shows the county attorney was informed the Taylor case was sent to outside counsel.
Regardless, Conover told Nassen in an email she was βleft completely in the darkβ about her removal from the case when asked about sending counsel to mediate with Taylorβs attorneys.
Both Nassen and former Chief Civil Deputy Andrew Flagg resigned from the office over Conoverβs actions in the Taylor case.
βYou will separately receive my resignation letter, but your decision to blame Regina for this situation is unfair, greatly disappointing, and requires its own response,β Flagg wrote in an email to Conover in February 2021. Flagg added later, βAt a minimum, I would expect that you could understand, from the clientβs perspective, why the election of a new county attorney who publicly espoused those views could cause a lack of harmony in the representation.β