Girls Spared From Testifying : Former Officer Gets 8 Years for Pimping

A former California Highway Patrol officer accused of running a prostitution ring of teen-age girls out of his Huntington Beach apartment abruptly pleaded guilty at his preliminary hearing Monday in exchange for an eight-year prison sentence.

William Scott Taylor, 49, could have faced a 16-year sentence if convicted. But in an agreement approved by Superior Court Judge Luis A. Cardenas in Westminster, Taylor pleaded guilty to 25 felony counts and three misdemeanors--ranging from pimping and pandering with a minor to possession of cocaine for sale--in order to spare the youngest of the teen-age girls, who are 14 and 15, from testifying Monday.

“I think it was a fair agreement,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Connie F. Johnson said. “It’s difficult to make people understand how traumatic it is for these young girls to have to take the witness stand.”

Taylor, a nine-year veteran of the CHP, took a disability retirement in 1979 following an on-duty accident near Palm Springs. In 1983 he was arrested in Las Vegas on a pimping charge involving a young woman and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor. He was fined and place on probation in that case.

Huntington Beach police began investigating Taylor a few months ago after they learned that he was taking in young girls at his apartment near the city’s pier, then sending them out into the streets as prostitutes.

Taylor, in a low voice with his head bowed to avoid news cameras, admitted to all of the allegations against him, one by one, in West Municipal Court Judge Floyd H. Schenk’s courtroom. The charges involved a woman in her mid-20s, two girls who were 17, and the 14- and 15-year-olds. They had been working for Taylor for about a year, according to police.

Randy Payne, the Huntington Beach police investigator on the case, said he was pleased that Taylor’s guilty plea came before a trial.

“Some of these young girls are back with their families and are really trying to straighten out their lives,” Payne said.

In the past, a Superior Court judge would not get involved in a case until a Municipal judge had held a preliminary hearing and ordered a defendant bound over to Superior Court for trial. But in recent months, superior court judges have been holding “settlement conferences” in Municipal Court cases in an attempt to expedite many of them before trial.

After two days of hearing the testimony of the older girls in the case, Taylor’s attorney, Greg W. Jones, met with prosecutor Johnson last week, and the two of them agreed to seek a meeting with Cardenas.

Cardenas indicated that he would sentence Taylor to eight years in prison, but only if the defendant pleaded guilty now and spared the victims further testimony at the rest of the preliminary hearing or at a trial.

Taylor did not agree to the guilty plea Friday. But Jones said his client decided Monday morning to plead guilty “after having the weekend to think about it.”

The 28 counts were primarily felony counts of pimping or pandering. But several involved giving the girls drugs to sell.

The only dispute in Schenk’s courtroom Monday morning was over Jones’ vehement protest against the judge permitting news cameras. Law enforcement officials at one point were worried that Taylor was so upset about the cameras that he might back out of the plea agreement.

Taylor was fearful that news exposure that he was a former police officer could put him in danger at Orange County Jail, his attorney said.

Judge Schenk, however, permitted the cameras, and Taylor pleaded guilty with his head bowed throughout the hearing. At one point, Schenk sternly noted for the record that Jones was deliberately standing between his client and the cameras.