Murder Conviction Stemming From PCP Sale Voided : Decision: Appeals court rules that sale of PCP-laced cigarette to youth who later drowned did ‘not carry with it an inherently high probability of death.’

An appeals court Thursday overturned the murder conviction of a Huntington Beach man who sold a cigarette dipped in PCP to a surfer who later drowned.

Mark Edwin Taylor, 35, was sentenced in 1987 to 15 years to life in prison for his role in the death of a Montebello man.

Adrian Obregon, 18, was among a group of young men drinking beer at Huntington State Beach who, at Taylor’s invitation, paid $4.50 to smoke cigarettes dipped in PCP, a hallucinogen known as “angel dust.” Obregon, wearing headphones, then slipped into the surf. His body washed ashore the next day.

In a 2-1 decision, the 4th District Court of Appeal vacated Taylor’s second-degree murder conviction, meaning that he cannot be retried on that count.

“Furnishing or selling PCP, when viewed in the abstract, does not carry with it an inherently high probability of death,” in part because “merely conveying the drug to another does not require that it be consumed,” wrote Associate Justice Edward J. Wallin for the majority.

“By saying this, we do not condone the sale or use of illegal drugs in any amount. Some risk of death is always present. . . .”

The opinion concluded: “However, we decline to act as a superlegislature and enact the crime of murder for those rare and oftentimes strange instances when death results from furnishing PCP.”

In his sharply worded dissent, Justice Henry T. Moore Jr. said “the majority’s reasoning and result is ludicrous” and, in one aspect, “asinine.”

PCP, Moore wrote, is inherently dangerous, and “when one furnishes an illicit drug to another, it is with the realization that the drug will ultimately be consumed, if not by the buyer, then by someone else. It does not take an expert to confirm this--just plain common sense.”

While vacating the murder conviction, the court ruled that Taylor could be retried for involuntary manslaughter. However, Taylor has already served about six years of the sentence, two years more than the recommended maximum for involuntary manslaughter. He is serving his time at a California Department of Corrections facility in San Luis Obispo.

Spokesmen for the state attorney general’s office and the Orange County district attorney’s office said Thursday that they were reviewing the ruling and would soon make a decision on whether to file an appeal with the state Supreme Court or try Taylor on the lesser charge.

Taylor’s attorney, Jerry L. Steering, said his client’s conviction and sentence was in part the result of the “drug hysteria” prevalent just after the cocaine overdose of University of Maryland basketball star Len Bias.

The Taylor case marked the first time Orange County prosecutors had sought a murder conviction against a drug supplier when the drug was not directly responsible for the death.

At Taylor’s trial, prosecutors successfully argued that even though Taylor did not intend to harm Obregon, death would not have occurred if Obregon hadn’t been on PCP.