Taylor Brown’s criminal case continues to advance through multiple pre-trial hearings.
Brown appeared in criminal court in front of Judge Amy McFarland on July 3rd of her own accord with her attorney Andrea Lyon and her mother, Chicago Police Detective Annyce Brown. She was charged earlier this year with two counts of aggravated battery of police officers after a violent arrest in February of 2023. She failed to appear in court for her arraignment in February, and a bench warrant was issued for her arrest. She was located in Atlanta, Georgia in March and extradited back to Illinois.
Lyon requested the court modify Brown’s pretrial release so she could return to Georgia in order to continue her education at Paul Mitchell Beauty School. Lyon said her client’s education had been interrupted due to being arrested and held for several weeks awaiting extradition.
Prosecutor Tom Brown1 argued against the request. He said it took nearly three months to locate Ms. Brown at great cost to public expense. When Ms. Brown was indicted back in January, Normal Police officers attempted to notify her at her last known address in the town of Normal. However, she no longer lived there. It’s not clear why no one reached out to her Chicago Police Detective mother to find Ms. Brown’s location.
After hearing arguments that not appearing at the arraignment was a legitimate accident, Judge McFarland granted the request to modify pretrial release if Ms. Brown was willing to waive extradition, which Ms. Brown did.
Brown’s defense attorney filed a “Motion for Specific Discovery Regarding Vindictive Prosecution” on August 19th, 2024. The motion asserts that Ms. Brown is being charged because she filed a civil suit against the officers who arrested her.
On February 9th, 2023, following a suspicious fire at her residence, Taylor Brown was at the Normal Police Department waiting to be interviewed by police detectives. After forty minutes of waiting for a detective to arrive, she chose to leave the police station, since she had not been charged with any crime.
However, before she could leave, Officer Serena Cunningham, under orders from Detective Tyler VanWynsberg, seized Brown’s cellphone without a warrant and without articulating any probable cause. Brown resisted leading to an intense scuffle between Brown and six Normal Police Department officers.
According to the Motion for Discovery Regarding Vindictive Prosecution, during the attempted seizure of Ms. Brown’s phone, “Detective McComber kneeled on Ms. Brown’s back and forcefully pressed his thumb into Ms. Brown’s neck while he simultaneously pushed her head to the ground.” The motion also accuses Detective Cunningham of kneeling on Ms. Brown’s back while forcefully pulling on her arm. Ms. Brown’s phone was eventually seized by police, and she was arrested for resisting arrest and battery of a police officer.
Police are trained on how to stimulate pressure points on a person’s body to force an involuntary bodily reaction. Police frequently do this, and then claim the involuntary reaction was evidence of resisting arrest or battery of a police officer.
Despite being arrested for resisting arrest and battery of police officers, she was later released from jail with no bond & no charges. Normal police attempted to obtain a search warrant to retroactively legalize their unwarranted seizure of her phone, but the warrant was not approved by the McLean County State’s Attorney. It was later returned to Ms. Brown.
Even more suspicious, McLean County State’s Attorney later recused itself from the case citing unknown conflicts of interest. The Motion for Discovery requests all communications between Normal police officers, the McLean County State’s Attorney, and the State Appellate Prosecutor’s Office. It also requests any internal memorandum regarding issues of liability and “all information which might be exculpatory in that it would support a Motion to Dismiss for Prosecutorial Vindictiveness.”
After Ms. Brown filed the civil rights case against Normal Police Department, there was much grandstanding by her lawyers regarding the incident and much debate about the legality of the warrantless seizure of the phone.
However, almost nothing has been reported on the whole reason Brown was at the Normal Police Department in the first place. Earlier that night, a fire had occurred at her house. In an exclusive interview with Agitation Rising, Brown’s roommate, Ashontis Davis, alleges Brown started the fire at their home that night after a domestic dispute involving another roommate. In messages obtained by Agitation Rising, Ms. Brown admitted to breaking into the locked room where the fire started. Brown has not been charged with arson.
After her most recent criminal pretrial hearing on September 5th, 2024, Agitation Rising attempted to interview Ms. Brown outside the McLean County Law & Justice Center regarding her criminal & civil cases and the allegations made against her by her former roommate. She declined to comment.
Meanwhile, Ms. Brown’s civil case has been permanently stayed awaiting the outcome of her criminal case. The civil rights attorneys who initially filed Brown’s lawsuit, Abby Bakos and Ronak Maisuria, both filed motions to withdraw from her case back in February. U.S. Magistrate Judge Jonathan E. Hawley granted their request.
Two days before her civil case was about to be dismissed for failure to appear, Jonathan Loevy filed a notice of appearance on Ms. Brown’s behalf. This occurred while she was detained in Georgia awaiting extradition.
Ms. Brown next court date is November 12th, 2024 at 1:30PM. Judge McFarland will hear arguments regarding the defendant’s motion. Ms. Brown is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
