State High Courts Backs Voiding of Murder Conviction : Law: A Huntington Beach man was wrongly imprisoned for the death of a young surfer to whom he sold a PCP-laced cigarette, the justices say.

The state Supreme Court has ruled that a Huntington Beach man was wrongly convicted and sent to prison five years ago for second-degree murder after he sold a PCP-laced cigarette to an 18-year-old surfer who later drowned.

Without comment, the Supreme Court justices decided in a 4-3 decision not to review a lower court’s ruling last May that Mark Edwin Taylor, 35, should not have been convicted for murdering Adrian Obregon, 18, of Montebello.

In spring of 1986, Obregon had paid Taylor $4.50 for a cigarette dipped in PCP, a hallucinogen commonly referred to as “angel dust.” Obregon, who had also been drinking beer, later drowned at Huntington State Beach.

Taylor began serving a prison sentence of 15 years to life in 1987.

Jerry L. Steering, Taylor’s attorney, said Saturday that he expects his client to be released sometime in September. Taylor was not aware of the state Supreme Court decision on Saturday.

Prosecutors in the Taylor trial had successfully argued that even though Taylor did not intend to harm Obregon, death would not have occurred if Obregon had not been on PCP.

The 4th District Court of Appeal ruled in a 2-1 decision last May, however, that “furnishing or selling PCP, when viewed in the abstract, does not carry with it an inherently high probability of death.”

The court voted 2 to 1 to vacate Taylor’s second-degree murder conviction.

“It’s a sad deal,” Steering said. Taylor, he said, “is a nice guy. He didn’t kill anybody and he has suffered a lot.”

The state Supreme Court essentially said, Steering claimed, that Taylor spent too many “years in jail but we guess you really didn’t kill anybody.”

Steering said his client has no civil redress for his incarceration.

An official for the state attorney general, who had filed an appeal to the state Supreme Court, could not be reached Saturday.