Taylor = Thug

[Die-Hard-Fan]

Gun charges filed against Redskins' Taylor

NFL.com wire reports

MIAMI (June 24, 2005) -- Washington Redskins safety Sean Taylor would face a minimum prison sentence of three years if convicted on charges of pointing a gun during a dispute about an all-terrain vehicle.

A trial date was set for Sept. 12, the day after the Redskins open their season.

State prosecutors filed charges June 24 against the 22-year-old former University of Miami star. He faces a single count of aggravated assault with a firearm, said Michael Greico, assistant state attorney.

Taylor allegedly was among a group of people who got into a June 1 armed confrontation over a vehicle the player and his associates believed had been stolen. Another man in the group, 19-year-old Charles Caughman, also faces aggravated assault charges. He is accused of threatening and chasing someone with a baseball bat.

Taylor, the No. 5 overall draft pick by the Redskins in 2004, did not appear in court and has filed a written plea of not guilty.

His attorney, Edward Carhart, said his client hoped to avoid charges after meeting with prosecutors voluntarily and presenting polygraph test results the lawyer said clear Taylor of wrongdoing. Polygraph results usually are not admissible in court.

Greico said the charges involve three victims. He would not comment on the substance of the case but said Taylor faces a maximum prison term of 16 years.

Taylor signed a seven-year, $18 million deal with the Redskins after he was drafted. The team has excused him from further offseason practices and meetings so he can concentrate on his case.

Taylor was charged with drunken driving in October after attending a birthday party for receiver Rod Gardner. Those charges were dismissed, but Taylor was convicted for refusing to take a blood-alcohol test. The conviction was later dismissed.

Taylor also has fired two agents, was fined for skipping one day of the NFL's mandatory rookie symposium and was accused of spitting on a player during a game at Cincinnati.

[ToxicSkin]

wrong place buddy, all posts pertaining to Sean and his recent legal trouble should be posted in the Offical Sean Taylor and Miami Dade Police Thread.

[Die-Hard-Fan]

opps sorry.

[ToxicSkin]

No worries mate.

[Jake]

Merged.

DHF, please explore the boards before posting.

Heck, explore the whole site.

[General Failure]

Heck, explore the whole site.

That's just mean. It'll take weeks to look through everything. You just don't want him to post. You big meanie.

[WshSkins22]

I saw this in another forum, makes me think hmmmmmmmm...
http://www.extremeskins.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=104815
Apparently someone saw Sean Taylor working out in Golds gyn in ashburn today

[redskincity]

Taylor was charged, we need another safety!!

[Jake]

Heck, explore the whole site.

That's just mean. It'll take weeks to look through everything. You just don't want him to post. You big meanie.

Taylor was charged, we need another safety!!

[oafusp]

I saw this in another forum, makes me think hmmmmmmmm...
http://www.extremeskins.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=104815
Apparently someone saw Sean Taylor working out in Golds gyn in ashburn today

hahaha, funny.

Redskins players don't work out at your local Gold's Gym.
They have all the equipment they need at Redskin Park (Ashburn). 24/7

What's next...Dale Earnhardt, Jr. gets his oil changed at your local Jiffy Lube?

har, har.

[vife]

He faces minimum 3 years in prison, what we gonna do about him?

[hailskins666]

i don't know, but i'm merging this thread with the other forty pages on taylor.

[NikiH]

Ok you know that if he is sentenced to 3 years in jail it is possible he will not spend one day actually in jail right? Judges issue sentences and suspend the entire thing everyday. While he'd have that sentence hanging over his head if he screwed up again, he may not actually end up "in jail".

[hailskins666]

Ok you know that if he is sentenced to 3 years in jail it is possible he will not spend one day actually in jail right? Judges issue sentences and suspend the entire thing everyday. While he'd have that sentence hanging over his head if he screwed up again, he may not actually end up "in jail".

ROTFALMAO right. with his track record, how long do you think it would be until the sentence was 'unsuspended'? maybe a couple months. maybe less....

[NikiH]

Come on hailskins have faith. Maybe he needs to spend a month or two in general population in jail, to humble him a bit.

[JPFair]

He needs to fire his lawyer and bring in a Tom Meserau or Johnny Cochran. Oh wait, Johnnie Cochran is no longer with us. But, in any event, with the money that Taylor undoubtedly has in his saving account, he'll purchase himself a nice "dream team" of lawyers and get it reduced down to simple assualt, he'll get a suspended sentance, serve community service, swear not to do it again, and oh, the most important of em all, he'll be required to make a "donation" to a charity of the courts choosing (probably something to do with the local court).

[Deadskins]

Police said Taylor got out of the car after spotting the men in front of one of their homes and pointed a handgun while demanding his ATVs. No shots were fired, police said. Taylor returned 10 minutes later with more friends, police said. This time, Taylor got out of the car and hit one of the individuals, Ryan Hill, 21, with his fist while Caughman chased another person with a bat, the police report said. After a tussle, Taylor and his group again left the scene, police said.

They went to a home owned by the mother of one of Taylor's friends, where Taylor had been parking his ATVs. A few minutes later, several shots were fired into the home and at the two cars -- including Taylor's Denali -- parked outside, according to people involved in the case who requested anonymity because a police report on this incident hasn't been filed. No one was hurt. Police retrieved shell casings from at least two different weapons, but no arrests have been made. Police consider the shooting a separate investigation.

Carhart said the shooting would be a key part of Taylor's defense.

"They are just blowing smoke when they say that they are still investigating the other case," Carhart said. "I am confident the state attorney's office hasn't seen all the witnesses or examined all the evidence.

"There's every reason to believe the people who claim to be victims are the actual perpetrators of serious crimes. And the state had to choose one side or the other. Hopefully, [the decision] is not because of Sean Taylor's high profile."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 00535.html

That quote is from the end of the article. It sure sounds promising for ST.

[WshSkins22]

Guys, I dont realy understand where this situation is going right now, does he get excused from training camp that is my prediction, or does the trial get pushed back and he reprts or what?

[General Failure]

He's a B list celebrity. He won't face any real time.

Justice means nothing today
Now that the courts are for sale
Pick a crime from the menu; pick a sentence and defend you
And pay up the down payment called bail
The system's for sale

[SkinsLaVar]

Get this in ur head....Sean Taylor is not going to jail.

[1niksder]

Guys, I dont realy understand where this situation is going right now, does he get excused from training camp that is my prediction, or does the trial get pushed back and he reprts or what?

He should be in Training Camp and if the case isn't pleaded out by 9-12 then he'll get the trail date pushed back beyond the season.

[WshSkins22]

^^^ k thanks for the info

[SkinsLaVar]

sean taylor: hits like a linebacker, runs like a deer, acts like a child.

[WshSkins22]

^^ very very very true, he is the best safety I have had the pleasure to witness play football, hands down

[1niksder]

Emotions can overwhelm Sean Taylor

The former Miami star could face prison if he's convicted of assault.
By Carlos Frias

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Saturday, June 25, 2005

HOMESTEAD — At times, Aulga Clarke can't even tell whether her great-grandson, the professional football player, is home with her.

When the small, three-bedroom house in Homestead falls silent, she walks to his room and knocks on the door. She finds Sean Taylor on his bed, reading a book.

"He likes to be by himself," Clarke said.

"Good morning, Mama," he tells her as he kisses her on the cheek. Then he sits down for a bowl of her cornmeal porridge. He swears the stuff is what made him grow up to be 6-feet-2 and 231 pounds, that these victuals made him such a fierce hitter at the University of Miami and the No. 5 pick of the Washington Redskins last year. Aulga smiles at the compliment.

To his 84-year-old great-grandmother, Sean Taylor is just the 22-year-old who spends his summer in front of her house — his home in the off-season — washing his cars, a sparkling maroon BMW 760 and a GMC Denali SUV that are the envy of this working-class neighborhood. He mows the lawn, mends the fence, prunes the mango tree and tends to the croton and flowering jasmine bushes. All the while, his pair of mixed pit bull pups run around the lawn, she says.

This is the young man his family knows. The one who loves Aulga's traditional Jamaican cooking and goes fishing in the Keys to bring back snapper for her to fry up in a brown stew for dinner.

Few outside this family, though, have come to know the real Sean Taylor.

Police say Taylor is the suspect who waved a gun at a man and beat him because Taylor suspected him of stealing his pair of all-terrain vehicles June 1. Taylor would face a minimum prison sentence of three years if he is convicted on charges filed Friday by state prosecutors. He faces a single count of aggravated assault with a firearm, assistant state attorney Michael Greico told The Associated Press. Taylor did not appear in court and filed a written plea of not guilty.

A Sept. 12 trial date has been set — the day after the Redskins open their season, further complicating his brief history with the team.

Taylor prefers home

Before playing a down for the Redskins, Taylor skipped the NFL's mandatory rookie symposium, earning a $25,000 fine. He wouldn't return calls from his Hall of Fame coach, Joe Gibbs, in the off-season.

And even though he became the starting safety with Washington last year and was second on the team in interceptions, he is still not a household name, even to football fans. That's largely because since his days at the University of Miami, he was known to snap at reporters and walk away during interviews.

"People have their good and bad things. Everybody does," said his mother, Donna Junor, who spoke briefly outside of the home she shares with Clarke and Taylor's younger half-brother.

In the off-season, instead of relaxing in some Miami Beach mansion he could have purchased with his seven year, $18 million contract, Taylor stays in this 30-year-old ranch home, with his family, where Aulga makes him hot mint tea twice a day. The peach house with salmon trim is at the end of the block, and chain-link fences separate houses painted a hodgepodge of colors from fuchsia to baby blue. Sidewalks are cracked and hurricane shutters and plywood sheets are still up from last season. A religious grotto to St. Barbara shares the front lawn with pink flamingos.

All of it makes Taylor's luxury cars resplendent in the scenery.

"He misses being here when he's in Washington," Junor said.

Those who know him say that's no surprise. He is only truly comfortable around family, intensely loyal to friends and former teammates, and distrustful of outsiders. Repeated calls to Taylor and his agent for this story went unreturned.

"People say he's standoffish, not too emotionally attached, aloof," said Armelia Rolle, who has known Taylor since he was in elementary school, and whose son, Antrel, a former defensive back at UM and rookie with the Arizona Cardinals, has been friends with Taylor since they were 6. "Part of his personality, I wish Antrel would have."

Coach remembers intense leader

Taylor grew up in a structured home. Although he now chooses to stay with is mother, since age 9 he lived with his father, Pedro, who is the chief of police in Florida City, a municipality of about 10,000 people, just south of Homestead. His father tried since the ninth grade to get his son into Miami's Gulliver Prep, until he finally was admitted his junior year, said Sean Taylor's high school football coach, Steve Howey.

Howey saw several sides to the young Taylor.

On one hand, he clearly can remember his Gulliver team down 21-0 at halftime against American Heritage in the 2000 playoffs when Taylor, a senior safety and fullback on that team, roared into the locker room. He accused his teammates of quitting, and said that if they were going to lose he, for one, would quell the pain by making his opponents hurt for the next 20 minutes of football. That's what he was going to do. What were they going to do?

Gulliver scored 24 points in the second half to win the game 24-21, and went on to win the state title that year.

"He took over the game," Howey remembers.

But Howey also knows the Taylor who might not show up to practice the Monday and Tuesday of the following week, except to visit the trainer's room for a rub down.

"That's just Sean," Howey said. "You deal with it. You know he'll make up for it in the game. That's why people take a chance on Sean."

Howey said he never felt Taylor was mean-spirited, but intimidation is definitely Taylor's game. Since high school, he has been known to level a late hit and take a 15-yard unsportsmanlike penalty because "he's just sending a message," Howey said.

During the summer, some teams would not scrimmage Gulliver in seven-on-seven flag football because Taylor would go for the hit instead of the flag.

"It's all fun and running around, and Sean's coming up and nailing people," Howey said. "I couldn't teach him to calm down and just pull the flag."

That emotion has continued to spill out.

When Gulliver played Cardinal Newman, Taylor wrestled an opponent to the ground, earning him a one-game suspension.

When he was a freshman at UM, he got into a fight during a pickup basketball game at Florida International, witnesses said, but no charges were filed.

He was the one who tackled running back Frank Gore in spring practice of 2002 — "He came in too hard, too low," one source said — when Gore tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee.

And in his first year in the NFL, the Cincinnati Bengals accused him of spitting on one of their receivers during a game in November. The league checked the film, but did not find enough evidence to level a fine.

At the same time, Taylor is known for being generous with his time and money. In high school, he sought out a freshman center who was starting in his first playoff game, and counseled him all week until the game.

After signing his NFL contract, he spent $17,000 to buy 34 gold championship rings for a the Palmetto Bay Pop Warner football team, three-time national champions, which are coached by the father of one of his high school teammates. And later, he bought new jerseys for the Gulliver basketball team.

The knock on his career continues to be his temper. Taylor has been too eager to respond to anyone who might challenge him. That habit may cost him his career, if not his freedom.

"He's got to learn to handle things a different way," UM strength and conditioning coach Andreu Swasey said. "He's seeing that he could lose something he really loves."

WshSkins22 wanted to know about ST and Training Camp

Neither Taylor nor Carhart attended the arraignment, but they are required to appear before Miami-Dade County Circuit Court Judge Mary Barzee on July 12 to update her on discovery in the case.
Trial is tentatively set for Sept. 12, the day after the Redskins open the season against the Chicago Bears. However, Carhart plans to ask Barzee to postpone the trial until next offseason in order not to further disrupt Taylor's football career. Taylor is expected to be on hand when the Redskins begin training camp at Redskin Park on Aug. 1.