MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) – A federal judge on Thursday found a man accused of threatening to kill law enforcement officers not guilty by reason of insanity.
Chief U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Beaverstock ruled that there was sufficient evidence that Karl Anthony Taliaferro committed the crime of impeding a federal officer by threat. But he wrote that there was also “clear and convincing evidence that the defendant was suffering from a serious mental illness at the time” and that he was “unable to appreciate the nature and quality or wrongfulness of his actions”.
Authorities arrested the 28-year-old Mobile man in April and accused him of threatening to shoot local and federal law enforcement officers.
Defence attorney Richard Shields told FOX10 News that his client had been committed to psychiatric facilities half a dozen times and had a pending civil commitment proceeding at the time of the incident.
Shields said Taliaferro suffered from delusions.
“He had it in his head that he had a million-dollar music playlist and that when people heard it, they would want to pay him a lot of money,” he said.
Shields said Taliaferro had previously been convicted of a felony and was not allowed to own a gun. This was a problem in the defendant’s mind, he said, because he believed it was important to have guns to make rap music videos.
Shields said Taliaferro went to his former probation officer to ask how he could get his gun rights restored. When he was told that federal law prohibited him from owning firearms, he demanded to know who to talk to. Someone at the probation office pointed him to the nearby Homeland Security Investigations office, Shields said.
And that sparked the confrontation.
According to a federal criminal complaint, Taliaferro walked into the office and said, “All these federal agents need to watch their (expletive) backs and leave me the (expletive) alone. Honeycomb is on these streets”.
Taliaferro then made several other threats, according to the criminal complaint.
The Beaverstock trial consisted of two pieces of evidence – a statement of facts agreed to by both sides and read into the record by a prosecutor, and a psychiatric report previously obtained by the court.
Taliaferro will now be sent to a federal facility for up to 45 days to determine whether his release would pose a “substantial risk of bodily injury to another person or serious damage to the property of another”.
Shields said Taliaferro will also be subject to lifetime supervision by the U.S. Probation Office.