Jury Sentences Man To Death For Killing Witness In Separate Murder Case
By Tony Hanson
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- A Philadelphia man was convicted and sentenced to death on Wednesday for the murder of a witness in another murder case.
Twenty-one-year-old Derrick White was found guilty on charges that he shot and killed 33-year-old Abdul Taylor, a father of eight and mentor to countless neighborhood young people, outside his mother's house on Ellsworth Street in 2010.
The jury, which heard evidence including prison tape recordings of the defendant talking to one of the alleged killers in the earlier murder, deliberated just a short time before first convicting White -- and then imposing the ultimate penalty.
Prosecutor Richard Sax had this read on the jury.
"People are fed up," Sax said. "I mean we had the young woman who was just murdered because she was a witness to a murder. The murders continue unabated, and this was a fine middle-aged man who had the courage to step forward and was executed for his trouble, for his courage."
Taylor had actually mentored the young man who killed him.
Three men charged with the earlier murder were awaiting trial.
