The former head of Jared Fogle's foundation, who provided the former Subway spokesman with child pornography, is requesting a federal judge change his sentence after a year in prison.
Russell Taylor was sentenced to 27 years in prison last December after pleading guilty to 12 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor and one count of creation or distribution of child pornography. In a motion filed last week, Taylor argued that his former attorneys gave ineffective counsel, which led him to accept a plea deal.
The motion, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana by Taylor’s attorney Zachary Newland, said there was not probable cause for the search warrant that led authorities to child pornography on devices in Taylor’s home. Taylor’s attorneys should have tried to have the evidence from the resulting search thrown out, Newland said in the motion.
The warrant authorized a search for child pornography, but it also contained hand-written references to possible bestiality, based on information from a Jane Doe witness who reported Taylor to the police. Taylor argued Jane Doe was “coerced into requesting sexually explicit material” in a deceptive manner and into filing a complaint by a former police officer who had a “personal vendetta against Taylor.”
A key piece of evidence was a photo of a woman — whose face is not shown — engaging in a sex act with a dog. Jane Doe said Taylor texted the photo to her.
She told police the photo was of Taylor’s wife. But Jane Doe’s identification was inaccurate and "unscientific," Newland wrote in the motion, as she used characteristics of the woman’s breasts to identify her.
“This wildly unscientific identification is hamstrung by what is missing: any mention of Angela Taylor’s significant scar from her caesarean section operation,” the motion states. “Jane Doe would have personally known about Angela Taylor’s scar because Jane Doe had been sexually intimate with both Taylor and his wife.”
In the motion, Taylor also alleges police should have known the woman in the photo was not his wife, because they had other nude photographs of her at the time which would have shown the differences.
Taylor also argues his legal counsel was ineffective because they failed to inform him some of the child pornography charges pertained to material of his own children. He had nanny-cams in bedrooms and bathrooms in his home which captured extensive footage of children bathing, changing and masturbating.
Some of the footage showed his own children, but other children appearing in the footage were not related to Taylor.The footage of his own children, Taylor said, was merely of them changing clothes and was not pornographic.
His legal counsel did not fully investigate all charges and evidence before Taylor signed his plea agreement, he said. They had not reviewed all evidence a week before his sentencing, and they reviewed the entire plea agreement for less than 24 hours before advising him to sign it, according to the motion.
“There was no way that trial counsel could have adequately investigated these additional charges (with separate new victims) along with Taylor’s legitimate defenses in order properly advise Taylor to take the deal under these time constraints,” the motion states.
These failures by Taylor's legal counsel caused him to accept the plea deal, Taylor said. Otherwise, he said he would have insisted on going to trial.
Taylor’s former attorney, Brad Banks, could not be reached for comment. His new attorneys, Zachary Newland and Jeremy Gordon, did not respond to requests for comment.
The evidence obtained in Taylor's case was also used to incriminate former Subway spokesman Jared Fogle. Taylor worked as the head of Fogle's foundation, and the two were close friends. Taylor and Fogle turned on each other in their criminal cases.
At his sentencing about a year ago, Taylor wept and said he’d gone to sleep “in a puddle of tears” every night since his arrest.
“I promise you’ve never had a person more remorseful than I am,” Taylor told the judge.
He is currently serving his sentence in a facility in Florida and has requested a hearing on his motion.
