Former Titans scout Blaise Taylor was sentenced Wednesday to consecutive life terms after being convicted of poisoning his girlfriend, Jade Benning, and their unborn child on July 1.
That means Taylor will spend the rest of his life in prison, and then some: the two life sentences will run one after the other.
The sentencing hearing also drew a wave of support letters on Taylor’s behalf. More than 80 people wrote in to vouch for his character, and Nashville assistant district attorney Jan Norman pushed back hard on that effort in court.
“Your honor, the defense just submitted 87 letters all speaking to Mr. Taylor’s character,” Norman said, via Alicia Patton of WKRN.com.
“They describe a man of honor, honesty, a man of great accomplishments and as someone who has faith in the Lord and was raised by a strong family. More than one of the authors of those letters actually stated he is someone they would want their own daughters to marry.
The person described in these character letters, the authors themselves, not one mentioned Jade Benning, not one of them mentioned baby Ivy, and not one single letter out of the 87 letters mentioned anything about what Blaise Taylor did.”
Taylor’s attorney, Letitia Quinones-Hollins, said the defense was preparing to challenge the outcome.
“We are extremely disappointed but not surprised by the harsh sentence,” Quinones-Hollins said. “This was a flawed trial of a tenuous case, and we will appeal and look forward to doing so.”
For now, that appeal is Taylor’s only path forward. Until an appellate court says otherwise, Tennessee’s position is that Taylor murdered Benning and their child, and did so in a particularly heinous way. The burden now falls on Quinones-Hollins to prove that trial errors were serious enough to change the result.