CORRECTION: This story was updated to reflect the fact that police found drugs in Mr. Taylor's car after his arrest. (3pm MT, March 23, 2022)

By Stephen Silha for Yes! Media.
Broadcast version by Lily Böhlke for Michigan News Connection reporting for the YES! Media-Public News Service Collaboration

Everette Taylor is a family man.

Except that he's in prison and can't see his family.

The slim, 6-foot-1-inch 45-year-old is being held at the Macomb Correctional Facility in Michigan. Over the past 23 years, he's resided in 16 of Michigan's 30 prisons, which house about 33,000 people-disproportionately men of color.

Taylor is not as famous as his daughter Breonna, who was killed by police in Louisville, Kentucky, on March 13, 2020, and whose death helped to spur the historic racial justice uprisings. He's one of the 2.3 million mostly faceless incarcerated souls whose treatment is a stain upon America's promise of liberty and justice for all.

It's not that he didn't deserve a term in prison, but he certainly doesn't deserve to languish there for the rest of his life. Taylor had six kids before he was 19. Young, unemployed, and Black, he was determined to support them. Busted for dealing drugs, he's spent the majority of his adult life in prison.

On Feb. 12, 1998, Taylor was dealing drugs, and when he delivered a bag to Elijah McGee through the driver's window of the car, McGee sped off. Taylor grabbed and retained the bag of contraband, but one of his accomplices shot at the car and killed the driver.

So, Taylor was convicted, as per Michigan law, as an "aider and abettor," an accomplice to the crime of first-degree murder.

Because he didn't pull the trigger, the jury reduced his term to second-degree murder, sentencing him to 25-50 years in prison instead of life without parole.

Shortly after the shooting, the Grand Rapids police found drugs in the back seat of Taylor's car-marijuana and cocaine. They booked him for drug possession with intent to sell, which carries a sentence of 20-40 years. But because he was given poor legal advice, Taylor's sentences were carried out consecutively, not concurrently, which they would have been had the drug sentence come first. So, between the two convictions, he was sentenced to 45 years minimum in prison.

This is also known among prisoners as "death by incarceration."

I am continually amazed by how many super-smart people are languishing in our prisons. So-called correctional facilities are essentially warehousing human beings, and many facilities are spreading disease and discouragement. Many inmates should instead be with their families and communities, working to create positive change. They should be lawyers, doctors, barbers, ministers, active fathers, hiking partners, chefs, lovers.

Many of these men and women have been forced to face up to who they are with days, weeks, months, or even years of introspection-the kind privileged people pay good money for at meditation retreats, drug therapies, and self-help seminars.

By all accounts, Everette Taylor has been as good a father as the prison system has allowed. Five of his kids have survived with his help and good counsel-but not his daughter Breonna, shot and killed in her own apartment by police who raided it, looking for drugs that were supposedly in another apartment.

I met Taylor through Joshua Puckett, the son of Joe Creedon, a dear friend who died of AIDS in 1991. After losing his father, Puckett came home from school one afternoon to discover that his mother and her wife had been murdered by their next-door neighbor. Traumatized, he joined a gang, and a 12-year-old girl was tragically killed in gang war crossfire.

Puckett has been in prison for 28 years. Like Taylor, he was sentenced for a crime he did not directly commit but in which he was involved as an "aider and abettor." He has called for Taylor's release.

Unthinkable Loss

Taylor is like many parents of color who have lost their beloved progeny to police violence in America.

Speaking to him via phone interviews, I found out that "Skeeter," as his friends call him, had his own problems with police while growing up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in the 1990s. Passed over for jobs because of his skin color, victim to the stagnant economic growth of that decade, he dealt drugs. It was the most lucrative and easy way to support his six children.

Back then, 21-year-old Skeeter was a popular man about town in Grand Rapids. Breonna was his fourth child, born when he was just 17. She and her mother, Tamika Palmer, moved to Louisville when Breonna was 5.

Taylor has chosen to stay in the background in the years since Breonna's murder, saying he "didn't want my record to detract from the situation at hand."

But in fact, his record typifies important aspects of the many stories that Breonna's death symbolizes. Tens of thousands of Americans-a majority of them people of color-were mistreated by police and unfairly sentenced after anti-marijuana and tough-on-crime laws (co-sponsored by then Sen. Joe Biden) were passed in the 1980s and '90s.

People like Taylor were labeled "super-predators" by politicians on both sides of the proverbial political aisle. Today, although many leaders disavow such language, people like Taylor remain incarcerated-an incalculable loss to his family and community.

"You're either locked [up] or dead, basically," says Taylor.

People Like Taylor Belong at Home With Family

"Skeeter is the glue [of the family]," affirms Taylor's mother, Janice Rostic. She explains that his nickname originated after his uncle commented, when he was a baby, "His head looks like a mosquito!" Rostic didn't like that, but her son nevertheless came to be called "Skeeter."

Taylor's son Everette III, who is named after him, is affectionately known as "Little Skeeter." The 29-year-old reminisces, "Ever since I was in fourth grade, he's reached out to me and given me good advice," adding, "Even when I got in trouble, he's been there for me."

Our prisons are filled with people like Taylor who have turned themselves around in various ways-people whose insights, caring, and intelligence would be much more useful, and less expensive, on the outside than behind bars, and whose families yearn to be with them.

Taylor was sowing his oats and, in his words, "figuring things out" in 1992, when he was only 16. His six children-all from different mothers, in the span of only three years-were Asia, De'Andrea, Ateaonia, Breonna, Everette III, and Shantelle. "I was smoking so much marijuana," he explains, "I honestly thought I was sterile."

Today, his children are the center of his life. He writes and speaks with them regularly, encouraging them to have patience and to stay in touch with each other. "I really respect their mothers for keeping our family together, for letting me have access to them," he says. He says he's on good terms with them all-mothers and kids.

"Dad is the glue that keeps us together," says his 29-year-old daughter De'Andrea, who goes by Dee Dee, and who until last year lived in Houston as a social worker for Goodwill.

Taylor's dream is to continue to rebuild relationships with family and loved ones, to get a job, and to ultimately open a barber shop. Meanwhile, Dee Dee's mission-as was Breonna's-is to get their father out of prison.

Recently, Dee Dee moved back to Grand Rapids with the intention of opening "Breeway," named after her late sister, as a halfway house for returning prisoners, including her dad.

Memories of Breonna, Family Aspirations

Like any family that loses a loved one, there's a giant piece of the fabric missing, and everyone is trying to figure out how to stitch things back together after Breonna's death. According to Ateaonia, her sister was "lively, sparkly, the life of the party." Her father and surviving siblings attest to how she smiled a lot and was independent and driven to make life better for herself.

Breonna stayed in close contact with the family, texting and FaceTiming them often. She took her brother, Everette III, on memorable tours of Grand Rapids and Louisville. Like her father, she attracted people but didn't demand attention. She was "laid-back," as per her father's favorite description of her.

According to her grandmother, Rostic, "These kids-including Breonna-are sisters and brother. There was never any sense of half-this or half-that."

Yet there's been no mention of these siblings in Breonna Taylor's obituaries.

"Since we lost Breonna," Ateaonia Taylor, 28, reports, "Dad's been calling almost every day. He's a great father. I wish he could be home with us, meet his grandkids, be with us." Her 27-year-old sister Shantelle, who got married in September 2020, concurs, saying, "I wish he were here to walk through these times with me."

"Thank God we can have real conversations," says 29-year-old sibling Asia Tucker, grateful for the ability to communicate in spite of her father's incarceration. "I feel closer to my dad than to my mom. He helped me stop smoking. And when I was homeless, he gave me hope."

Taylor's current "early release date" is 2031, which means he will be 54 years old by the time he is free. That's nine more years of missing out on birthdays, weddings, Christmases, and being able to hug his children and mother.

"I wish I could hug Skeeter," says Rostic. "I can't imagine how it feels to be locked up and dealing with no visits because of COVID, in the middle of all this."

Stephen Silha wrote this article for YES! Magazine. Silha is a freelance writer, filmmaker, and futurist. His current project, Journalism that Matters, is a conversational think-and-do tank concerned with the future of journalism.


get more stories like this via email

Alabama's reliance on fines and fees to fund state services can turn minor incidents such as a traffic violation into overwhelming debt for low-income residents.

To address the issue, Alabama Values, through its Justice in Focus initiative with the Beacon Center, is working to identify solutions. During a recent virtual panel, advocates and legal experts discussed how financial penalties contribute to poverty and proposed strategies to ease the burden.

Aylia McKee, chief public defender of Montgomery County, highlighted the root of the problem: how fines and fees are assessed.

"Some of the biggest troubles with the determination of funds is the failure to provide information about an individual's ability to pay," McKee pointed out.

A survey of nearly 1,000 Alabama residents found 83% had to forgo essentials such as medical care, food or transportation to pay their legal costs.

Judge Tiffany McCord of the 15th Judicial Circuit of Alabama, said the justice system is a balancing act, which aims to deter crime while maintaining public safety. However, she stressed courts offer alternatives to ease financial burden for those who seek help. McCord added stigma and embarrassment often prevent people from sharing financial struggles, making it harder to access support.

"We want people to know or understand that you can ask for your fines and court costs to be remitted," McCord emphasized. "We want people to know and to understand that you know you can ask to do community service instead of paying fines and court costs."

Richard Williams, executive director of the Beacon Center, runs the Next Steps Program, designed to offer another alternative. He described how the initiative supports people navigating the justice system through leadership classes, therapy and real world skills.

"We have trained staff persons who are walking with them and they're walking through things around financial management," Williams explained. "They're walking around things of how do we regulate our relationships "

While the Next Steps program has seen success in Montgomery County, advocates argued similar efforts are needed statewide. Panelists also called for legislation to ensure fines and fees are assessed based on a person's ability to pay and urged efforts to rebuild trust between communities and the courts.


get more stories like this via email

More than a third of Idaho's jails have failed their inspections but consequences for failing grades are unlikely.

The nonprofit newsroom InvestigateWest has created a database of inspections for Idaho's 35 jails over the past three years, showing 14 failed in 2024.

Whitney Bryen, injustice and vulnerable populations reporter for InvestigateWest, noted the inspections are not required, as in many other states. She said the Idaho Sheriffs' Association conducts the inspections and all the jails have voluntarily agreed to them.

"There is no state agency that oversees Idaho's jails," Bryen pointed out. "There's no mandated inspection of any kind in terms of someone from the state going in and checking on jails' conditions and how detainees in those facilities are doing."

Bryen explained the jails get a report after the inspection but it is up to the jails to decide what they want to do with the information. She observed many of the failing jails said it was not possible to pass because they do not have money for things such as building upgrades or new hires. Bryen added lawmakers have reached out since the InvestigateWest database was published.

Jails fail the inspection if they do not pass any of the Idaho Sheriffs' Association's eight standards. Bryen emphasized one of the standards is to have at least two deputies on duty at all times and some jails failed because they only had one on duty at certain times of day.

"That was a very common standard that was failed," Bryen reported. "In fact, every one that failed either had too many detainees or not enough staff and some of them faced both of those issues."

Bryen added nine jails did not pass the association's recommended standards, although this did not cause them to fail the inspection. She stressed standards in jails do not just protect the people who are incarcerated.

"It's not just a rule being broken -- and again, it's not a rule because they don't have to follow it -- but these standards are designed to protect the people behind bars and the deputies who are keeping those folks safe."


get more stories like this via email

Advocates feel Connecticut and the nation can enact legal system reforms in 2025, ranging from ways to more humanely treat incarcerated people to increasing investments in communities, rather than in the criminal justice system.

In Connecticut, some advocates pushed for reforms to parole so it is not as punitive.

Wanda Bertram, communications strategist for the Prison Policy Initiative, said while similar reforms passed in New York, they have stalled in Connecticut.

"There hasn't been much movement on that in Connecticut," Bertram acknowledged. "I think that's less because these aren't winnable reforms, it's more because legislators don't see criminal justice consistently as a priority."

Overall, she feels criminal justice not being a priority for lawmakers is why reforms do not often pass in statehouses. Connecticut's 2024 legislative session ended without major criminal justice reforms passed. One of the few related bills to pass was House Bill 5524, which allocates $25 million to youth justice centers.

While many reforms were goals from previous years, Bertram noted they are reforms with long-term benefits. One is restoring voting rights for people with felony convictions who have been released from prison. Connecticut is one of several states to restore the right in recent years but she noted some of this year's defeats can affect achieving next year's goals.

"The nation's rightward turn and its election of Donald Trump and far-right congresspeople is somewhat of a defeat in and of itself," Bertram observed. "Because the ideologies that are being promulgated by those new electeds are explicitly violent with, for example, new support for the death penalty."

Despite this and other defeats from this year, she emphasized 2024 brought plenty of positives, including Massachusetts being the first state to ban life without parole for people younger than 21, the Federal Communications Commission establishing new phone rates for prisons, and several states providing funding for public defenders.


get more stories like this via email