The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Withdrawal of guilty plea denied
Appellate court denies withdrawal of guilty plea for Chardon man who admitted to rape charges
A panel of Eleventh District Appellate Court judges earlier this month rejected the post-conviction withdrawal of a guilty plea of a Chardon man currently serving a 22-year prison sentence for rape.
Clifford D. Taylor, 56, was seeking to withdraw his guilty pleas to two counts of first-degree felony rape, arguing ineffective assistance of counsel, the post-indictment infringement of constitutional rights (denied “access to legal material, forced into overly restrictive cell, and denied exercise”), and the plea being coerced and involuntary.
Taylor pleaded guilty to the charges in October 2014 in front of Lake County Common Pleas Court Judge Eugene A. Lucci. At
the time, Taylor admitted molesting his girlfriend’s daughter while baby-sitting her between January 2012 and July 2013 at her Wickliffe home.
The following month at this sentencing hearing, Taylor tried to rescind the guilty pleas. He blamed the incident on the minor victim and accused Assistant Lake County Public Defender James Mathews of coercing him into making the plea.
“I need to rescind the plea deal,” Taylor said to Lucci at the sentencing hearing. “I was not told the truth by my attorney. He threatened me.”
Lucci asked Taylor how his attorney had threatened him. Taylor told the judge, “I was threatened with mental incompetence. He threatened me, saying there was some reason I wasn’t thinking properly.”
Lucci told Taylor that Mathews was simply trying to ask him if he thought a hearing to determine his mental status was necessary, rather than trick him into making a plea he didn’t want to make.
“You are represented by a very competent counsel,’ Lucci said. “I consider him to be highly competent and specialized in the area of criminal law.”
The judge also said that he asked Taylor “about 100 questions” at the change of plea hearing the month prior to make sure he made the plea knowingly and voluntarily.
At the plea, Taylor said he encouraged the girl to perform sex acts on him by bribing her with a Pudding Pop when she was hungry.
“It’s not true,” Taylor said at his sentencing. “I was told to lie to you by the man sitting right next to me. I don’t even remember what I told you. But it wasn’t true. The lie was that I put my penis in her mouth for Pudding Pops. My penis did get in her mouth, but I didn’t put it in there. She put it in there. She grabbed me. She was experimenting. I was drunk and realized it too late.”
Lucci denied the request and sentenced Taylor to two years longer than the jointly recommended sentence made by the Lake County Prosecutor’s Office and public defender’s office.
“There was not a scintilla of remorse,” Lucci said. “Even in court he blamed the victim for taking his penis in her mouth as a form of experimentation. At the age of 5!”
Appellate court Judge Matt Lynch wrote in his opinion upholding the sentence that, “(u)ltimately, the standard for the postconviction motion to withdraw Taylor’s plea remains that of manifest injustice.”
Lynch said Lucci did not abuse his discretion in finding that Taylor “failed to satisfy that standard in light of his statements made at the time he entered his pleas.”
Judges Timothy P. Cannon and Mary Jane Trapp concurred with Lynch.