Conviction Overturned, Man Mourns 6 Lost Years : Law: Mark Taylor was found guilty of second-degree murder for supplying PCP to a man who later drowned, but state Supreme Court ruling has freed him from prison.

Mark Edwin Taylor is clearly not the same person he was before he served almost 6 1/2 years of a 15-year-to-life sentence for a murder he never committed.

Tattoos, like the one of the old Huntington Beach pier that spans his back, compete for space on his muscular frame. Jailhouse jargon permeates his speech. Weightlifting is “driving iron,” his friends are “dogs” and the unofficial punishment dished out by correctional officers is “flashlight therapy.”

Prison, Taylor said, “made me harder. I don’t trust nobody.”

Two weeks ago, the scales of justice tipped in Taylor’s favor and the former Huntington Beach surfer and avowed drug addict was set free. The state Supreme Court overturned his second-degree murder conviction for supplying PCP to someone who took the powerful hallucinogen and then drowned.

His prosecution--a unique episode in Orange County’s legal history--has confounded almost everyone who has heard about it since April 29, 1986, the day Adrian Obregon died in the surf off Huntington Beach.

“All the counselors I ever talked to, all the (corrections) officers I ever talked to, said that I got screwed. Every one of them. And these are all regular officers,” Taylor said Thursday in an interview with The Times. “They couldn’t believe it.”

Taylor was prosecuted under a now-failed--some say misguided--attempt by the Orange County district attorney to convict drug suppliers for second-degree murder if someone died as a result of the narcotics they provided, even if the drugs contributed only indirectly to the death.

Since the policy was initiated six years ago, at least four people in Orange County and an undetermined number of defendants statewide have faced prosecution for such drug-related deaths. The local cases have had mixed results, with sentences varying widely from probation to 15 years in prison for virtually the same offense.

On appeal, the prosecutions have not fared well either, making it unlikely that similar cases will be pursued in the future. Besides the overturning of Taylor’s conviction, high courts have refused to reinstate a murder charge against another Orange County man who supplied cocaine to a woman who died.

In those decisions, appellate justices called the use of the legal theory under which the defendants were prosecuted “seriously flawed,” “haphazard,” “unpredictable” and a potential threat to the constitutional rights of equal protection and due process.

“I think (prosecutors) were reaching on this,” said Deputy Public Defender Tom Havlena, who supervises appeals for the Orange County public defender’s office. “There are already stiff criminal penalties for selling drugs. But it’s a stretch if someone sells drugs and then someone else voluntarily takes those drugs and dies from an overdose or anything else. That is not murder.”

But to this day, former Deputy Dist. Atty. Thomas Borris, who prosecuted Taylor, defends the prosecutions as useful and innovative steps by law enforcement to fight a serious crime problem.

“If society has chosen that drugs are bad for society, then I think prosecutors have a right to use every tool in their quivers to combat the sale and use of drugs in our society,” said Borris, now a defense lawyer in Anaheim.

“I am sorry Mr. Taylor feels the way he does,” Borris added, “but at the time no one held any more malice toward him than any of the others the office was prosecuting. Had the appeal gone the other way, he would still be sitting in there for 15 years.”

The entire episode has left Taylor angry and bitter for having spent some of the best years of his life doing time on a charge he believes never should have been filed against him in the first place.

But Taylor said “it would be foolish for me to go out and get even with the system,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, I would rather just go and get on with my life.”

While in custody, Taylor, who turns 36 later this month, managed to get his high school diploma, complete vocational courses in electronics and finish his first semester at Chapman University. He also has become an advocate of sorts for prison reform, claiming that he saw friends physically abused by authorities.

“One day a cop could have a bad night with his wife and decide to take it out on you,” said Taylor. “Hopefully you are going to write it so it doesn’t sound like I’m crying for help for all of the prisoners because some people deserve what they got. . . . I’m not holding up the flag saying let them all out, but look at some of them.”

Taylor’s carefree and often careless lifestyle--even his attorney concedes his client is “no angel”--abruptly ended the day he and a friend went down to Bolsa Chica State Beach to get high and throw a Frisbee.

“I’ll be honest with you. I’m an ex-drug addict. I’m a drug addict; put it that way. There is no such thing as an ex,” said Taylor, adding that he no longer uses drugs. “I never sold drugs in my life. I was so bad I was robbing people for their drugs.”

Taylor and his friend were smoking a PCP-laced cigarette in midafternoon when they were approached by a group of young men who wanted in on the action. The men--including 19-year-old Adrian Obregon--offered to pay a few dollars to share the PCP cigarette.

“It was a party. We were just having fun,” said Taylor. “Next thing we know--I don’t know if it was a guy or a girl--somebody was screaming and yelling, saying, ‘I think somebody’s out there drowning.’ ”

Witnesses said Obregon had slid on his rear end down to the water’s edge. They said he was wearing a stereo headset over his ears and was screaming and waving his arms before the ocean water took him out to sea. Taylor said he and two other men dived into the water trying to find Obregon.

“We’re feeling around with our hands and our feet to see if we can find the body,” said Taylor. “We never did. . . . I tried to save his life.”

Taylor said he and his friend gave a statement to lifeguards and were walking down the beach when several law enforcement vehicles surrounded them. Taylor was handcuffed and put in jail. Two days later, he was arraigned on second-degree murder charges along with seven counts of drug distribution.

Obregon’s autopsy results showed high levels of PCP contamination in his blood and body, indicating long-term use of the drug. Taylor’s lawyers later discovered that Obregon was scheduled to appear in court the day after his death to face two separate charges of PCP possession.

“(Obregon) was a dealer,” claimed Peter A. Seidenberg, one of Taylor’s defense attorneys.

Nevertheless, Taylor was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to prison by Superior Court Judge Richard J. Beacom after the prosecution argued that PCP supplied by Taylor led to Obregon’s death.

“He was so high he couldn’t think to say to himself, ‘I’m going to stand up and get out of the water,’ ” Borris said at the time.

Years of appeals followed until last month when the state Supreme Court refused to overturn a 4th District Court of Appeal decision that threw out Taylor’s conviction. In their ruling, the appellate justices tightened up the requirements for proving murder by concluding that PCP is not a drug that carries “a high probability of death.” In other words, Taylor could not have known that Obregon would die from his cigarette.

Taylor was prosecuted under the so-called felony-murder rule, which states that someone can be charged with second-degree murder if they commit a felony that is inherently dangerous to human life.

Using that provision, the Orange County district attorney initiated a series of second-degree murder cases in 1986 as a way to combat increasing drug use in the county. The cases were partly based on second-degree murder convictions from the 1950s that involved the supplying of wood and grain alcohol, phenobarbital and heroin.

One of the first cases involved Sandy Patterson. He was accused of suppling cocaine to Jennie Lucero, who died of an overdose on Nov. 25, 1985, while smoking and snorting the drug.

In the Patterson case, a Superior Court judge dismissed the second-degree murder charge--a decision that was later upheld by an appellate court. Patterson ended up serving 273 days in jail for simply furnishing drugs to Lucero.

Also in 1986, Philip Gerald Alviso, a Santa Ana mechanic, was convicted of murder for selling cocaine to Phillip Mikolajek of Stanton, who later died of an overdose. While Taylor was sentenced to 15 years to life, Alviso received five years’ probation.

The same year Taylor was convicted, Lynn Clark, who supplied heroin to a friend who died of an overdose, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter. Prosecutors had sought a second-degree murder conviction.

Deputy Dist. Atty. John D. Conley, supervisor of the major offenses unit, said the Orange County district attorney’s office has not filed a similar second-degree murder case since the appellate rulings.

“There might be a crack of a possibility under particularly egregious circumstances to file one of these cases in the future,” Conley said, “such as using dope as a weapon, like poisoning, or giving a child a huge dosage.”

Larry Boyle, a deputy district attorney in Los Angeles County who specializes in felony murder rule cases, said the appellate decisions substantially tightened the rules but did not gut the use of the provision for drug-related deaths.

“I think it is disappointing. I don’t like to be held back in any way,” Boyle said. “Now we need to show that the defendant knew the selling of the drugs was inherently dangerous, that he knew it was dangerous for others. Our hands aren’t tied. We just need to do more investigation. In Taylor’s case, I find it hard to believe that someone involved with PCP doesn’t know it is a dangerous drug.”

PCP, or phencyclidine, is an animal tranquilizer capable of producing hallucinations, violence, disorientation, irrational behavior and incredible strength in humans.

Taylor, however, says he does not feel any particular responsibility for Obregon’s death. “No. No. I didn’t do that. He knew what he was getting into way before he ever met me. He knew what was coming up.”

Yet, he says he has sorrow for Obregon and sympathy for his parents. “I would like to see his mother and just say, ‘Hey, I’m sorry that it happened.’ I’d like to say something.”

According to his police record, Taylor’s now-overturned murder conviction was the first time he was ever involved in a serious crime. Since 1974, he has been convicted of three misdemeanors--reckless driving, resisting arrest and being under the influence of a controlled substance.

“No white-collar crimes, no burglaries, no blue-collar crimes, no nothing,” Taylor said.

Now out of prison, he has spent the last few days rediscovering Huntington Beach and getting reacquainted with his family. When he was sentenced to prison for murder, Taylor said, it was his family he thought about first.

Plenty has changed since 1986. The old T-shaped Huntington Beach pier--memorialized in tattoo form on Taylor’s back--has been rebuilt. Five of his nieces and nephews were born while he was incarcerated. An uncle and an aunt died.

“My poor grandparents. First thing I thought of was I’m never going to see these people again alive, I mean as a free person. They’re 82 now and I didn’t think they were going to make it this far,” Taylor said. “Also, I really felt bad for my Dad because all of his life he has always wanted me to be something like him.”

Next month, Taylor and his fiancee, Mary--a friend of 14 years--intend to marry. His family is delighted.

“They said I look healthy, I’ve grown up and it looks like I’m going to fly right,” Taylor said. “The state wore me out. They did a good job. I’m tired. I just want to go and get a job and raise a couple of kids. Go into that prison (marriage) for a while--one I’m going to enjoy very much.”