Alleged plea deal in fatal stabbing rejected

Kalila Taylor, the Flanders woman whose 1999 conviction for fatally stabbing a Riverhead High School student was overturned by the state's highest court, rejected a plea deal Wednesday that would have sent her to prison for at least 18 years, her attorney said.

Taylor, 33, may face a hearing this year to determine whether she is mentally competent to stand trial, attorney John LoTurco of Huntington said. She now is being held in the Suffolk County jail.

LoTurco, after a hearing before State Supreme Court Justice C. Randall Hinrichs in Riverhead, said outside court that Taylor rejected the offer made by the judge and "has elected to go to trial."

Robert Clifford, a spokesman for the district attorney's office, said prosecutors had not offered Taylor a plea bargain.

The latest offer would have required Taylor to serve 18 years to life in prison if she pleaded guilty to killing Curtisha Morning, 17, LoTurco said.

In 1999, a jury convicted Taylor of second-degree murder for stabbing Morning 94 times in 1996 and dumping her body in woods near Riverhead High School. Taylor, a former nurse's aide, was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

Prosecutors said Taylor was upset because the father of her child had shown a romantic interest in Morning.

The state Court of Appeals overturned the conviction in 2004, ruling that Judge Arthur Pitts improperly instructed jurors on DNA evidence.

Since then, Taylor has been examined by state psychologists after she wrote letters to judges and prosecutors claiming the father of her child and Morning were clones, and that a detective used a device that cloned people from snakes.

She has been found competent to stand trial several times, most recently in February, when doctors at Mid-Hudson Forensic Psychiatric Center in upstate New Hampton found her competent, Hinrichs said Wednesday.

LoTurco said he may contest the hospital's finding at a hearing later this month. He said a doctor he hired to examine Taylor last year found her incompetent.