Von Lester Taylor, 58, has been on death row for over 32 years for a pair of grisly murders at a remote Weber Canyon cabin in 1990.
During that time, he’s petitioned for a reduced sentence multiple times. On May 22, 2023, he filed his fifth appeal.
In 1991, Taylor pleaded guilty to killing 70-year-old Beth Potts and her daughter, 49-year-old Kaye Tiede, as well as shooting Kaye’s husband Rolf in the head, setting the family cabin on fire and kidnapping their two daughters Tricia and Linae, who were 16 and 20 at the time.
Rolf, Linae and Tricia would survive the incident.
Court documents state the family interrupted Taylor and Edward Steven Deli robbing the cabin on Dec. 22, 1990. After being shot, forced to undress and doused with gasoline, 51-year-old Rolf chased Taylor, Deli and his kidnapped daughters on a snowmobile and then by car before the assailants crashed and were captured.
Unlike Taylor, Deli pleaded not guilty at trial and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
But Taylor says Deli was the one who actually killed Beth Potts and Kaye Tiede. Citing an incompetent 1991 public defender and new ballistics analysis, Taylor’s lawyers are again petitioning for a reduced sentence.
His previous petition succeeded, for a time. Attorney Brian Pomerantz points to the 2020 decision by Utah’s US District Court that found reasonable doubt Taylor killed Kaye Tiede and Beth Potts.
A federal judge held a three-day evidentiary hearing and looked at ballistics evidence before concluding the two women were killed by the .44 Magnum carried by Deli, not Taylor’s .38 Special.
After the Utah attorney general appealed, Denver’s Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the death sentence a year later.
“The State of Utah wants to kill Mr. Taylor despite the uncontested finding of a federal court judge that he did not fire the fatal shots,” Pomerantz told KPCW.
The state’s appeal didn’t try to reverse the ruling based on who fired the gun. Instead, it said Utah law doesn’t distinguish between the murderer and the accomplice—and Taylor pleaded guilty to murder in general.
The 10th Circuit agreed accomplices can be equally liable for a murder in Utah.
“The office finds Taylor’s petition to be decades too late and without merit,” the Utah Attorney General’s Office told KPCW. “The state remains committed to imposing the sentence from the court.”
The latest petition to reduce Taylor’s death sentence is in Third District Court on Judge Richard Mrazik’s desk in Silver Summit as of May. The state of Utah has not yet filed a response, and no hearing has been scheduled.
This would be the first time Third District Court has seen the new ballistics evidence.
