Baltimore City Circuit Judge Roger Brown has presided over numerous murder trials in two decades on the bench.
But none, Brown said Tuesday, had the effect on him this one did.
Before sentencing Derrick Taylor, 27, of Baltimore, to three life sentences without parole, Brown recounted how one of Taylor?s victims, Nathan Gulliver, 49, took his very last dollars out of the ATM to repay a $125 drug debt owed by a friend to Taylor.
Prosecutors say Taylor and an accomplice didn?t care that he had been repaid ? and killed the three men anyway.
“The man took every penny out of his account,” Brown said. “That shook me to my very core.”
A jury convicted Taylor of felony murder in the triple murder of Gulliver, Antwon Arthur, 38, and Steven Matthews, 36, at a drug and alcohol recovery house in the Remington area of Baltimore on Jan. 10, 2005.
Taylor maintained his innocence. “My sympathies go out to the family, but I?m not the one who did it,” he said Tuesday.
Prosecutors said Taylor and co-defendant Corey McMillon, 29, shot the victims, even after being repaid Arthur?s debt. McMillon is serving a life sentence for a previous murder conviction and is slated to stand trial Friday.
Matthews? mother, Harriet Bell Monroe, testified that her son was a talented musician.
“I will never be able to hug my baby son again,” she said. “… I don?t want Mr. Taylor to ever walk the streets of this city or any other ? ever.”
