Wilson turned and faced his mother, who was seated in the 27th District courtroom, but expr-essed little emotion after hearing his sentence.
“I’ll catch up with you, Mama,” he said as bailiffs approached him to put handcuffs on him. “You keep looking out for me.”
His reaction to the guilty verdict, which came in just before lunchtime, was much different. After hearing the jury’s verdict, First Assistant District Attorney Murff Bledsoe asked that Wilson be taken into custody before the break.
As bailiffs approached Wilson, he raised both hands into the air and began loudly uttering incomprehensible phrases - some people would classify it as speaking in tongues. He punctuated the phrases with the words “I didn’t do it.”
Wilson continued the outburst as he was handcuffed and led through a side door. His mother, exiting the courtroom through a different door with family members, said, “praise Jesus” and “he got the last word.”
Several members of the Taplin family expressed gratitude for justice.
“I feel like Ray Lee can rest in peace,” said Sammy Taplin, Ray Lee’s cousin.
Taplin’s brother, James Taplin, said, “The main thing is that justice is served. We will always remember Ray Lee, but we thank God for the justice system.”
In a plea for leniency for Wilson, his attorney, Ryan Smith, told the jury that self-defense was among the most sacred rights in the country, but it is not celebrated because it leaves sorrow and sadness.
He tried to deflect blame for the shooting onto Jasmine Alexander, Wilson’s former girlfriend and charged accomplice in the murder. Ms. Alexander, an eyewitness to the shooting, admitted on the stand that she had lied about facts in the case several different times.
She said she was telling the truth in court on Tuesday because it was the right thing to do and Ray Lee deserved justice.
“Her capacity for deceit even fooled the district attorney’s office,” Smith said.
In the end, the jury believed the prosecution and the evidence it presented.
Bledsoe called Wilson’s self-defense plea a ridiculous story that Wilson was hiding behind to cover up a cold-blooded killing.
“Ray Lee Taplin was lured over there and never had a chance,” he said.
Bledsoe even took Wilson to task on his emotional testimony Wednesday in which Wilson broke down when talking about how he had known Taplin all his life.
“I’ve been doing this a long time and that’s one of the top two or three performances that I’ve ever seen,” Bledsoe said.
The evidence at the crime scene was staged, Bledsoe told the jury, and Wilson was the only one in the house after the shooting. Ms. Alexander ran to a pay phone across the street and called 911.
Taplin was found by police lying flat on his back, his arms folded across his waist. Bledsoe argued that a man who was shot in the neck would not land so neatly.
He said Taplin did not have anything in his pockets and suggested that the bat police found shoved up Taplin’s sleeve was planted after he was shot.
Bledsoe said Wilson’s actions were dastardly but that Wilson stooped even lower when he testified in court that hearing Taplin’s mother scream at the crime scene affected him.
Before Judge Joe Carroll sent the jury out to deliberate about sentencing, Bledsoe thanked them for their service and told them they were the conscience of the community and would put a price on the case.
The response from the 30 Taplin family members who listened in on the sentencing was respectful, although one of Taplin’s aunt’s threw her fists into the air inside the courtroom.
A few Taplin family members threw their arms up in the air and shouted as they walked past television cameras that were outside of the courthouse.
At the same time, a handful of Wilson family members huddled with his attorney just inside the front entrance of the building and spoke in hushed tones.
“I appreciate all the hard work the DA (District Attorney) team did,” said Taplin’s sister, Lowann Taplin. “They did an outstanding job and I want to thank them for their work.”
promer@temple-telegram.com
