Man, 37, gets life in death of teen

Insists on innocence in rooming house death

A Boston man insisted yesterday that he was not a killer just moments after relatives of Dominique Samuels denounced him as a soulless man who cruelly took the life of the 19-year-old Milton High School graduate in a Roxbury rooming house in 2006.

Rodrick J. Taylor, 37, spoke for seven minutes yesterday in Suffolk Superior Court, insisting that jurors who convicted him last week of second-degree murder had made a mistake.

"I cannot sit here quietly and be the scapegoat for the actions of others," he said, while reading from a typewritten text. "I am innocent. I did not commit this crime, and I am heartbroken the jury believes that I did."

Taylor was convicted of killing Samuels in late April 2006, hiding her body inside her room in the Woodbine Street rooming house for two days, and then taking it to Franklin Park, where he set her body afire in an attempt to destroy forensic evidence.

Superior Court Judge Stephen Neel imposed a sentence of mandatory life imprisonment with the possibility of parole after 15 years.

Taylor will be given credit for about two years spent awaiting trial.

"Rodrick Taylor's crime was brutal and senseless," Neel said. "It devastated Dominique's family and her community. It fully justifies the sentence."

Samuels's mother, Edwina Samuels, wagged her finger at Taylor as she delivered a victim impact statement.

"I don't know what happened to you in your life, but somewhere along the line, you lost your soul," she told Taylor, who stared calmly back. "They could have executed you on my front lawn, but it wouldn't have brought my daughter back."

Although Taylor; his mother, the Rev. Hattie Sessions; and his lawyer, John Swomley, all insisted yesterday that he was not the killer, one of the jurors who convicted Taylor said there was no doubt among the panel that they reached a just verdict.

Swomley and Taylor's family contend that Martin McCray, Taylor's cousin and a high school friend of Samuels's, was the actual killer. McCray testified for five days during Taylor's trial and denied that he killed Samuels.

"I'm saddened for the Samuels family," Sessions said. "But my son did not commit this murder."

Juror Jason E. Sylva, a Boston Globe employee, said that during deliberations jurors concluded that Samuels was killed either very late on the night of April 27 or in the early morning hours of April 28. McCray left the house at 10:30 p.m. on April 27, before the slaying occurred, Sylva said the evidence showed.

"Martin is not there [late] Thursday night. . . . Rodrick is still there," Sylva said. "Once we established it was [late] Thursday night, then the [prosecution] story fits and it's Rodrick."

Sylva said that under blistering cross-examination, some of McCray's answers changed from what he had told police. But, he said, "the important things didn't."

Sylva said McCray insisted that Taylor had confessed to him and that he had already left the building before the slaying.

He also said that second-degree verdict was not a compromise between jurors seeking acquittal and those in favor of a conviction. Instead, he said, jurors concluded that none of the evidence showed that Taylor acted with deliberate premeditation or extreme atrocity or that he had an intent to kill Samuels.

"We could never prove intent to kill," he said. "Something happened in that room, but it's not like he's [Taylor] saying, 'I'm going to kill this girl this night.' It's the right verdict."

Edwina Samuels said she, too, believed that her daughter's killer has been found.

"If anybody had a fair trial, it was Rodrick Taylor," Samuels said. "The evidence was there, and I am satisfied and confident that they have the right man behind bars."

Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said that if the evidence showed McCray was involved or killed Samuels, he would have been charged. But it did not, he said.

"Rodrick Taylor killed Dominique Samuels," he said, adding that defense assertions of innocence were vile and despicable."

"The verdict was sound, solid, based on compelling evidence," he said.

After an eight-week trial, the jury deliberated six days before convicting Taylor.

Dominique was one of eight children raised by Edwina Samuels after her husband died in 1998. The sisters used to have "emergency sister meetings" at which all would gather to talk, fix one another's hair, and laugh, Tiffany Samuels said.

"I will never be the same," Samuels' older sister told Taylor. "When you take your last breath, I hope you see her face."

Neel refused a request from Swomley asking the judge to toss out the conviction or reduce the verdict to manslaughter.

John Ellement can be reached at ellement@globe.com.