American teenager of mixed race who was convicted of lighting the deadliest fire in Arizona’s history. He was released after serving 42 years in prison.
Shortly after midnight on 20 December 1970, fire ripped through the landmark Pioneer Hotel building in downtown Tucson. Twenty-nine people died.
Fifteen-year-old Louis C. Taylor was eventually imprisoned for starting the fire, but new evidence presented in November 2013 suggested that it may not have been arson. On 2 April 2013, the 58-year-old Taylor was released from prison after pleading no contest to the original charges and given credit for time served. The Arizona Justice Project (a Phoenix-based non-profit group of attorneys and law students, advocating for inmates believed to have been wrongfully convicted) filed a motion earlier in 2013 for a new trial, which would have been difficult, as key witnesses are now deceased, and key evidence has since been destroyed. Also, modern arson investigators are unable to determine a cause for the fire, even using modern investigative methods.
Taylor, who said he was at the hotel to score free drinks at a holiday party held by an aircraft company that night, knocked on room doors to alert guests to the fire and later helped put the injured on stretchers.
A fire investigator presented a profile suggesting that the arsonist was a young black man. Another investigator testified in Taylor’s trial that an accelerant had been used in the fire, but that was not supported by laboratory tests and Taylor’s lawyers were not aware of the test results. Taylor, who is mixed Hispanic and African American, was convicted by an all-white jury during a time of racial tension in Tucson.
On the afternoon of 21 March 1972 in Phoenix he was found guilty of 28 counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. After his release, Taylor struggled to adjust and with finances. Four years later he would be arrested on a charge of armed robbery.
Link to Wikipedia biography