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The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s decision and denied a Fort Wayne man’s appeal after he was convicted of threatening a federal officer.
The appellate court ruled that Damon Taylor had made threats against an assistant U.S. attorney on several occasions, rejecting Taylor’s arguments that alleged the Indiana Northern District Court abused its discretion by denying defense-supported testimony while still allowing state evidence.
Maureen Merin, who prosecuted the case on behalf of the federal government, could not be reached before The Indiana Lawyer’s deadline.
Michelle Kraus of Ulmer Kraus Nimmo, Taylor’s attorney, did not respond to The Lawyer’s request for comment.
According to court documents, Taylor began his months-long tirade against the attorney after first visiting the attorney’s office in Fort Wayne in May 2022.
During that visit, Taylor reportedly came to discuss threats he was allegedly receiving, and when he asked to see the attorney, he was greeted by someone whom he seemed not to be expecting.
After a brief conversation, Taylor changed the subject and expressed belief that the attorney had his personal property. When the federal attorney said she, nor her office, had his things, Taylor became upset and issued the first of his aggressive remarks, threatening to start “shooting things up.”
This began a series of threats Taylor made against the attorney, even physically appearing at the Allen County prosecutor’s office and the federal courthouse.
He said in the presence of a court security officer was that if he didn’t get his stuff back from the attorney, then he would be at her house, saying, “Her blood will be on her hands.”
Taylor also began sending messages to or about the federal attorney through Facebook, and had called the her while she was at work.
A criminal complaint was filed against Taylor on Feb. 17, 2023, and a grand jury indicted him the following month based on two specific threats made in May 2022 and February 2023.
Although the charges were based on those two instances, the district court granted the government leave to introduce the entirety of Taylor’s statements not made directly to the attorney, like messages to friends, to establish his motive and context for the specific threats.
But the court denied Taylor’s request to admit testimony from several individuals, including a nurse practitioner and a case worker who had provided outpatient evaluation and support to Taylor at the Parkview Behavioral Health Institute and two Fort Wayne police officers who had previously witnessed Taylor’s irate behavior toward authorities.
This admission of government testimony and denial of defense testimony formed the basis for Taylor’s appeal to the higher court, which contended that the court deprived him of a fair trial.
Judge Ilana Rovner wrote the appeals court concluded that the government’s evidence was “closely related to the two charged threats” and was relevant to the case, but that the court did not abuse its discretion in disallowing the defense’s evidence for several reasons, including that there is difference between mental health check-in sessions and one-off encounters with the police and the “multi-month pattern of threatening behavior focused on the AUSA.”
“Although each of them had, to some extent, observed Taylor’s irrational and aggressive or angry behavior, and in the case of the police officers, his tendency to threaten authority figures, their testimony had limited, if any, probative value with respect to Taylor’s intent with respect to the AUSA, his subjective understanding of the threatening nature of his statements and his conscious disregard for the likelihood that the AUSA might perceive his statements as threatening violent action against her,” Rovner wrote.
The court did acknowledge that there is “no dispute” that Taylor suffers from significant mental health challenges.
“Even so, he made threatening statements to a federal law enforcement officer that were alarming on their face,” the opinion stated.
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