Fogle pal seeks review of child porn sentence

Russell Taylor, the former head of Jared Fogle's charitable foundation, wants a federal judge to vacate or modify his 27-year prison term on child pornography charges.

In a motion filed Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, Taylor claims his former attorneys failed to provide adequate counsel and challenges the search warrant that led to the discovery of images of child pornography on Taylor's computers and other electronic devices.

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office, which prosecuted Taylor and Fogle, said the office had no comment on the motion. Taylor's former attorneys did not immediately respond to a message requesting comment on Taylor's allegations that his 2015 guilty plea "was the product of ineffective counsel."

Taylor pleaded guilty last year to 12 counts of producing child pornography and one count of distributing child pornography. He was sentenced Dec. 10, 2015, in the case that led prosecutors to Fogle, Taylor's one-time boss and close friend. The former Subway sandwich spokesman is serving a nearly 16-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to possession or distribution of child pornography and traveling across state lines to have commercial sex with a minor.

Taylor's 27-page motion, filed by Zachary Newland, of Mansfield, Texas, contends there was not probable cause for the search of Taylor's home and that his attorneys should have moved to throw out evidence obtained in that search and later used as the basis for the criminal charges. Newland did not respond to a request for comment on the motion.

The motion also contends the Jane Doe witness who reported Taylor to police was "coerced" by a retired Indianapolis police officer to request sexually explicit text messages from Taylor "in a deceptive  manner ... to carry out his personal vendetta against Taylor." And it describes an alleged 2014 confrontation between Taylor and the former IMPD officer at Jane Doe's home in which Taylor claims he was confronted by the man, who Taylor said was naked and waving a firearm "while seemingly under the influence of illegal drugs."

Taylor's motion also says investigators employed a "wildly unscientific" method to identify a woman depicted in a photograph Taylor sent to Jane Doe. The image, which showed a woman engaged in a sex act with a dog, was among key evidence used to obtain a search warrant that turned up the child pornography at Taylor's home. Taylor's motion said Jane Doe identified the woman, whose face is not shown in the photograph, as someone she knew from distinguishing factors related to the woman's breasts.

"This wildly unscientific identification is hamstrung by what is missing: Any mention of (the woman's) significant scar from her cesarean section operation," the motion states. "Jane Doe would have personally known about (the woman's) scar because Jane Doe had been sexually intimate with both Taylor and (the woman)."

The motion also says "multiple images" of Jane Doe and the other woman, nude together, were on Doe's phone when she met with and turned over the bestiality image to investigators.

In his claim of ineffective counsel, Taylor contends his attorneys did not tell him before sentencing that three of the child pornography counts involved family members secretly photographed in the bathroom of Taylor's home on the west side of Indianapolis. He argues that those images do not meet the definition of child pornography.

"But for trial counsel's errors Taylor would have insisted on proceeding to trial on the counts related to his (relatives) given that there was no factual or legal basis to support those charges," the motion states.

Taylor, who is serving his sentence at a medium-security federal facility in Florida, has asked the court to set a hearing on his motion.

Call IndyStar reporter Tim Evans at (317) 444-6204. Follow him on Twitter: @starwatchtim.

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