FACT CHECK of Tennessee House Speaker Sexton Claim that Alleged Killer of Belmont Freshman Would Have Been in Custody Had State Senate Acted: FALSE

In an in-depth interview on Friday, WTN SuperTalk 99.7 afternoon host Matt Murphy spoke with Tennessee Speaker of the House Cameron Sexton about the shooting and death of Belmont University student Jillian Ludwig.

The Tennessee Star conducted a FACT CHECK of Speaker Sexton’s claim in that interview that Shaquille Taylor, the alleged killer of 18-year-old Belmont University Jillian Ludwig, who was shot in the head on Tuesday and died on Thursday, would have been in custody if the Tennessee State Senate had passed legislation in the August Special Session that the House had passed. The Star determined that Sexton’s claim is FALSE.

The transcript of that interview and the corresponding FACT CHECKS conducted by The Star can be seen below.

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Matt Murphy: So, obviously, we’ve been covering this very difficult story involving the passing of a Belmont University student by the name of Lillian, or Jillian, pardon me, Jillian Ludwig, who died Thursday, yesterday morning after being shot in the head while walking near campus Tuesday.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Prior to allegedly shooting Belmont University freshman Jillian Taylor in the head on Tuesday, November 7, 2023, Shaquille Taylor was deemed incompetent to stand trial for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, a felony offense, on May 19, 2023, by Metro Nashville Davidson County Circuit Court Judge Angelita Dalton, who also dismissed that felony charge.  The judge based her decision based on the determination presented in court in April 2023 by a panel of three court-appointed doctors that Taylor was (a) not competent to stand trial, but (b) not sufficiently incompetent to be involuntarily committed. Tennessee Statute, T.C.A.§ 33-7-301 (b), addresses “treatment of defendants found incompetent to stand trial,” and states, “If the court determines on the basis of the mental health evaluation and other relevant evidence (A) That the defendant is incompetent to stand trial because of mental illness; . . . Either party may demand a jury trial on the issues.” Subsequent to Judge Dalton’s decision to dismiss charges against Taylor, Metro Nashville Davidson County Glenn Funk chose not to appeal Judge Dalton’s decision, or to demand a jury trial on the issues, as T.C.A.§ 33-7-301 (b) allows, and Taylor was released from custody. The Special Session of the Tennessee General Assembly convened on August 21, 2023, and ended on August 29, 2023.  On September 21, 2023 Taylor was arrested by officers of Metro Nashville Police Department on charges of felony auto theft of more than $10,000 but less than $60,000, a Class C felony in Tennessee. He was granted a low, $10,000 bond by Metro Nashville Davidson County Magistrate Steve Holzapfel. Taylor’s $10,000 bond was posted by Brooke’s Bail Bonding, and he was released from custody on September 23, 2023, on the condition that he appear in Court for a hearing on Friday, November 3.  A prominent Nashville criminal defense attorney told The Star on Saturday that Taylor’s more recent, September 21 arrest would have merited a higher bond, which may have kept him behind bars, in other parts of the state. Given Taylor’s prior history, the attorney told The Star most other counties of Tennessee would have set his bond at no lower than $75,000, not $10,000.  When Taylor failed to appear in court on Friday, November 3, his bond was revoked and an arrest warrant was issued for him. A new higher bond of $20,000 was set by the court. On Tuesday, November 7, 2023 Taylor shot 18-year-old Belmont University freshman Jillian Ludwig in the head while she was walking near campus. He was arrested later that day on felony charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and bail for that offense was set at $280,000. He remains in custody. Jill Ludwig died of her wounds on Thursday, November 9, 2023.

Shaquille Taylor has been accused of that crime. The alleged killer had bonded out and was released from custody in April as a result of a determination by three doctors who determined that he was incompetent to stand trial.

According to the district attorney in this case at a competency hearing on April 13th of 2023, three court appointed doctors unanimously testified that Taylor was incompetent to stand trial. State and federal law prohibit prosecution of persons found to be incompetent, therefore, Judge Angelita Dalton was mandated to dismiss the case, so she let him go.

One wonders, considering the aftermath of this, if there’s not a better way to speak on this, is our own Speaker of the House of Representatives, Cameron Sexton, who joins us on the Murphy Show Hotline.

Cameron, thank you so much for your time this afternoon. Good afternoon.

Cameron Sexton: Good afternoon. Thank you, Matt, for having me on.

Matt Murphy: So there, I don’t know that there’s confusion, but well, I’m confused as to how this can be going on, and I’m curious what your take is regarding what y’all have tried to do in the legislative process. And if there is more to do regarding making sure that if someone is incompetent to stand trial, that they fall under the umbrella of being involuntarily committed,  almost, I wouldn’t say automatically, but certainly it should trigger that process, one would think.

Just give me an overview on where you are regarding this Belmont story.

Cameron Sexton: Yeah, so I’m going to take you a little further back into this gentleman’s past. He’s been in the adult criminal system since 2015. So he’s been charged and convicted and sometimes pled down over the last eight years. So what happened in April this year when he was charged again,  and then what happened this week, the tragic event, is all a series of his criminal history.

[FACT CHECK: Shaquille Taylor was arrested on charges of  aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in August 2021, not April 2023, as Speaker Sexton asserted. The three doctor panel told the Court in April 2023 that Taylor was not competent to stand trial, and in May 2023, Judge Dalton dismissed those charges.

The Forensic Evaluation Training Manual published by the Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, and revised in 2021, outlines how mental health professionals should determine whether defendants are mentally competent.

It explains that adult defendants are “initially evaluated” at a state facility, like a jail. Defendants who are deemed incompetent, but who may have the ability to become competent with treatment, should be committed to a mental health facility to receive it with the goal of deeming the defendant competent in 30 days. However, the required course of action for an individual who is deemed both incompetent and unlikely to become competent with treatment remains unclear.

“Those found incompetent who are not committable or no longer committable may receive treatment on an outpatient basis for restoration to competency if they are charged with a felony and would be at risk for becoming committable if not treated,” the manual explains, citing Tennessee law. “They are subject to such a plan for no more than two years.”

Tennessee Statute, T.C.A.§ 33-7-301 (a) states that, “If, and only if, the outpatient evaluator concludes that further evaluation and treatment are needed, the court may order the defendant hospitalized, and if in a department facility, in the custody of the commissioner for not more than thirty (30) days for further evaluation and treatment for competence to stand trial subject to the availability of suitable accommodations.”

A recent study, “Competency Restoration for Adult Defendants in Different Treatment Environments,”  published in 2019 at the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law  showed that 81 percent of defendants deemed to be incompetent to stand trial are determined to be competent when brought up again within 90 to 120 days after required treatment.]

The other problem that we have is since he was an adult and he’s no longer juvenile, we have no idea what his juvenile record was either. That’s gone. It’s abolished. You have no idea. And so we don’t know if this started in June, but what we do know is all these crimes started small, like, with a robbery, and then they got more violent, which is usually what happens with criminal behavior.

And so, if you want to kind of look at what happened and I know when we went in the special session, people are like and we had issues with the Senate saying, there’s nothing here that we need to do. Everything can wait till January. Well, when we were preparing on the house side for special session, we worked with the DAs and law enforcement across the state.

We had a bill with General Funk about misdemeanor crime, getting a mandatory mental health evaluation. We passed that on the House side because they were saying there’s a huge issue with that. This guy had mental health. He started with this back in the day. So, that bill wouldn’t have fixed that, but it would have laid the groundwork.

[FACT CHECK: Speaker Sexton is referring to HB 7027, which passed the House in August 2023. The bill specified the State would pay for mental health evaluation of individuals charged with misdemeanors, and would have gone into effect on October 1, 2023, eight days after September 23, 2023, when Taylor was released on a $10,000 bond for a separate felony auto theft charge for which he was arrested on September 21.

Passing this bill would have had no impact on the May 2023  decision by Judge Dalton to declare Taylor incompetent on charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and no impact on Nashville Magistrate Stephen Holzapfel’s September 23 decision to set Taylor’s bond for felony auto theft at $10,000.

The bill sought to remove the sentence “if the defendant is charged with a misdemeanor” from Tennessee Code 33-7-304(a), which currently requires Tennessee to pay for the mental health evaluations of defendants who are unable to afford the costs themselves. However, the bill sought to amend the next paragraph of the Tennessee Code to specify, “[w]hen a court orders a defendant charged with a misdemeanor to be evaluated” under Tennessee law, the court “shall order the evaluation completed” within 30 days.

Previous reporting from Tennessee media indicated the bill “would require the state to pay for the costs of court-ordered mental health evaluation and treatment for criminal defendants charged with a misdemeanor who are believed to be incompetent to stand trial.”]

And then we had another bill in special session because we had listened to a lot of people about involuntary commitment being a problem. And so we had a version of that bill that we got to the House floor. (emphasis added)

[FACT CHECK: Speaker Sexton did not specify which bill he was referring to here.]

Then we started having more conversations with General Funk about this type of issue right here, where the involuntary commitment clause, if someone’s deemed incompetent, would not be held in mental health evaluations or be committed.

And so we were working to address that language when we came back the second week of special session.

And the frustrating part… is only for the Senate to say, there’s nothing that we can do. And so if we would have passed that bill in special session with the changes that General Funk was proposing, this individual in September would have probably been involuntarily committed and this incident never would have happened.

[FACT CHECK: Sexton failed to specify the bill, what it originally stated, what changes District Attorney Funk proposed and whether those proposed changes were ever introduced as amendments to the bill and voted upon by the House.]

And so that’s the frustrating part of this. And so it’s, it’s a whole series of things. You have law enforcement who says that this person is a danger to society. And then you have mental health evaluation from doctors who want to say, well, they’re not a risk to society, even though his criminal history has been for eight years, 2015, the people who evaluated him this year.

And the judge had to dismiss the charges.

[FACT CHECK: Sources tell The Star that other judges in other counties of Tennessee, when faced with the same mental evaluation recommendation of defendants as was the case with Taylor in May 2023, have made different decisions than Judge Dalton, and have ordered the defendant to be sent to involuntary commitment for treatment, in anticipation of subsequent determinations of competency. The Star will report in detail about these different judicial decisions in future articles.

Speaker Sexton failed to note that Judge Dalton’s decision to dismiss charges against Taylor on May 19, 2023 was appealable by District Attorney Funk, but that Funk chose not to appeal. Tennessee law provides a remedy to the judge’s decision, but District Attorney Funk failed to exercise that remedy, as T.C.A.§ 33-7-301 (b) allows.]

They knew the history that he had. You knew that he was going to offend again. And so for them not to deem that those past crimes that he was competent at that point to be charged and plead, to all of a sudden when he gets to a more violent crime, now he’s deemed incompetent. And so we had to . . .

Matt Murphy: Sorry to interrupt you, Cameron, but I asked the question earlier this week that if this is a legitimate loophole or a legitimate gap in the system where someone can be determined to be incompetent to stand trial, that they don’t understand the charges against them, they don’t understand the nature of the trial going on, so you cannot charge them or try them in that situation, but they are not deemed to be to the level of involuntary commitment, then we need to do something about that.

And, and I asked the question earlier in the week, who’s to blame here? And, I mean, Cameron, I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but it, it feels like you’re saying, if the Senate had been willing to take up some of the legislation the House passed in the special session, that Taylor might have been in jail, or incarcerated in a mental health facility. (emphasis added)

Cameron Sexton: Correct. Yes, and been through an evaluation.

The problem is, is when we got there, and we were trying to say, here’s things that we heard, because we spent months preparing for the special session, talking to a lot of people. And then this issue came to light a little bit later into special session, which is why we rolled the bill for another week, and we were holding trying to figure out which how to reword this with General Funk and his staff.

[FACT CHECK: Speaker Sexton provided no details regarding his claim he and District Attorney Funk – not a member of the Tennessee General Assembly – were “attempting to reword this.” ]

And so we – the problem is we have a few members of the Senate, not a lot, a few, that there’s nothing extraordinary here. Anything that we need can wait till next year. And another thing is when we were talking to law enforcement, we were talking to judges, we were talking to individuals, they were giving us real life examples of what was going on.

And we weren’t going to go there to pass a red flag. We weren’t passing that. But there’s things that we could do in the mental health front. That’s what we talked about a lot. And this bill, if we could have got it passed with General Funk’s changes that we’re working on over the weekend, it would have changed.

[FACT CHECK: Again, Speaker Sexton provided no details of the portion of Tennessee Code Annotated this bill he says he was working on during the special session with Metro Nashville Davidson County District Attorney Glenn Funk would address, nor the specific new language which the bill he says he was working on which apparently was never entered into the public record or considered in a House committee during the special session. 

But perhaps more importantly, like most bills under consideration during the special session, this bill would have gone into effect on October 1, 2023, eight days after Taylor was released on a $10,000 bond for the felony auto theft charges.

In addition, any changes to the law that would have required involuntary commitment for an alleged criminal such as Taylor would have applied to the aggravated assault with a deadly weapon charges, which were dismissed by Judge Dalton in May 2023 after Taylor underwent the required mental evaluation by court-ordered doctors.

In addition, Taylor was apparently not subjected to mental evaluation subsequent to his September 21 arrest on felony auto theft charges, and the provisions of this potential bill that never saw the light of day but, according to Sexton, would have tightened mandatory involuntary commitment standards, would not have applied to Taylor’s arrest and release on those felony auto theft charges. ]

And so now, Matt, here’s the bad part. You have… this individual who committed this who was deemed incompetent and now the D. A. has to go back in and fight against him being declared incompetent again. Because if he’s declared incompetent again, guess what he gets to do, Matt?

Matt Murphy: I mean, doesn’t he? I mean, that’s the big question, right?

So I asked that question, too: if he walked in April, why wouldn’t he walk now?

[FACT CHECK: Under current law, Taylor is likely to be subjected to another mental evaluation to determine competency to stand trial for the murder of Jillian Ludwig. In the event the three doctor panel once again determines that Taylor is (a) not competent to stand trial but (b)not subject to mandatory involuntary commitment, District Attorney General Funk, under current Tennessee law, can appeal that decision.]

Cameron Sexton: Yeah, so I was talking again to General Funk and his assistant D. A. yesterday about this case. They’re going to have to go back into court and adamantly defend that this person is competent to stand trial knowing that he was deemed incompetent in April.

Matt Murphy: And I said yesterday, Cameron, and I just go back to this, that I’m not saying this is right, but I’m saying it’s how our legal system works. If I’m Taylor’s defense attorney, why would I not point to the incompetency determination in April to suggest that he’s incompetent today?

Cameron Sexton: Exactly right. That’s what you’re going to do.

That is exactly what you’re going to do. And then on top of it is, the other conversation that we had throughout special session and prior and post is about building more mental health beds for long term commitment. The average long term commitment, I had meetings yesterday, are six to ten days in our state.

That’s what’s deemed long term unless you’re deemed insane. Maybe this guy will claim that he’s insane for this point and maybe get some docs and meds. But we need more long term beds. This individual, if he’s incompetent to stand trial, there should be a mechanism that makes it easy to put him under involuntary commitment, which then he loses his ability to even purchase a gun, which I don’t think he probably did.

He probably got it from somebody. But it puts him in a facility for a long time under doctor’s care where he is not having another victim. In eight years, how many victims has this guy created? And when he gets to be the most violent, all of a sudden he’s deemed incompetent.

Matt Murphy: Cameron Sexton is Speaker of the House of the General Assembly in the state of Tennessee.

And he’s joining us today on the Murphy show to talk about this tragic case resulting in the death of Jillian Ludwig from Belmont University. Well, from New Jersey, attending Belmont University.

So specifically what – and you’ve gone over it, but I want to reiterate it – what is the proposal that you believe will solve this gap in terms of our justice with regard to individuals being declared?

I mean, well, and I guess maybe I can ask the question a different way.

Are you familiar with the oversight on the doctors themselves that are appointed to the court to make these determinations? Because a lot of folks are asking me how that process itself works.

Cameron Sexton: No, we’re not aware of that process. I know two of the three who evaluated were with the state and it’s like, okay, well, you know, what made your determination?

You know, how did that work? You know, what has been other cases? But look, if you take it back to the covenant shooting, she was under doctor’s care to correct.

Matt Murphy: Right?

Cameron Sexton: And so she – but it was voluntary. She was seeking treatment. Well, in that case, I mean, it’s hard to believe that through years under doctor’s physician care that you did not make threats or suggestions or opinions on things that you like to do to harm society.

And so I think a fundamental thing is, there’s two different variants. You have law enforcement who understands the risk and and they understand that he was a risk and you have the mental health people who want, who do not want to deem them a risk. And that’s a competing problem that we have to figure out.

We also have to figure out the involuntary commitment, which we think we have and changing it from “immediate” to “imminent” or another type of threat which we’re trying to tweak.

Instead of a word like “substantial,” using another word. It’s a little, few tweaks that would give us the capability for these individuals who are deemed incompetent to get them into an involuntary confinement, but they should not be walking out of the jail the next day. In September, as you said, this guy posted bond in September.

Matt Murphy: Well, and frankly, and it’s another subject for maybe a different person, but I’m flabbergasted that he got bond again.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Murphy is referring here to the $280,000 bond Taylor was subjected to after he was arrested for shooting Jillian Ludwig in the head on November 3.

Now it’s $280,000, but I don’t understand how you skip your court date after bonding out for stealing a truck and then you’re still eligible for bond on the aggravated assault, now, murder charge.

It doesn’t, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Your colleagues – final thought on this, Cameron – your colleagues on the other side of the aisle in the General Assembly are suggesting that this is a gun problem.

And the suggestion has been that Shaquille Taylor could legally purchase a gun and I, given his criminal history, and I’ve not seen it, I’ve not seen his rap sheet, so I don’t know exactly what the charges were against him, but I have a hard time believing that he had the ability to legally buy a gun.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Murphy is referring here to Democrats in the Tennessee House and Tennessee State Senate.

Are you aware of whether or not that’s true?

Cameron Sexton: Look, he would have to go in and check the boxes and, and, and do everything he was supposed to. He had been charged criminally since 2015. He was currently under investigation. In September, he had committed more crimes that were felonies. The likelihood of him walking into a store and, and filling out the form correctly and purchasing a gun is remote.

What we do know is what we found out during special session is you can go fill out the form, but you can lie on it. There’s no consequence until they come and check you to see if you filled it out right or not, unless the background check doesn’t work. That’s why it was important that we got to a unified court system so that the background checks are instantaneous, which they aren’t, which we couldn’t get past because we couldn’t get the other side of the chamber to want to do that.

[FACT CHECK: Sexton does not specify what bill he is referring to here.]

And so the Democrats are going to make this about the gun. I, I don’t think that this individual went and purchased a gun for this. He got the gun from somebody else. He did something for somebody else. He was shooting at another car and that’s what he did.

They want to make it about the gun. This is about the individual. We passed truth. Yeah. We passed truth and sentencing two years ago. If truth and sentencing would have been in place in 2015 when he pled guilty to some of this stuff, he would still be in jail, Matt. And so you have soft on crime groups with soft Democrats who want to protect the criminal and not the victim.

EDITOR’S NOTE – Media reports indicate that Taylor claimed he was shooting at another car and one of the bullets he shot went astray and hit Jillian Ludwig in the head. This claim has been accepted by the media, which has not explored other possibilities, which could include the possibility that Taylor targeted Ludwig.

We’re starting to try to change that. But this is what happens when you listen to people about being more protective of a criminal than a victim. We’re going to continue to work with DAs and judges and law enforcement to fix this because this should have never happened. The female that passed away should be alive today.

Matt Murphy: I hear the frustration in your voice and I just want to circle back to it because I’m not trying to pit you as Speaker of the House necessarily against the Senate, but I just want to make sure that I heard you correctly, that you feel like if the Senate had brought the same attitude with them to the special session that you could have gotten some laws passed during the special session that would have prevented this individual from being able to get out of jail.

Cameron Sexton: Yes, we could have and, and the frustration is, is what it is, is we were told your ideas are too complex. They’re going to take too much time or this is the governor special called session. There’s really nothing that we can do. We’re only going to do what he wants to do. Or there’s nothing extraordinary here, all this can wait till January and, you know, at the time that’s, you know, they didn’t want to be there.

And so look, the governor called us, we have a duty to Tennesseans to, to do policy that will keep us safe. Our job, number one job, one of the top jobs is to make sure that you’re safe in your community.

That you’re safe in your neighborhood, and you’re safe to walk in a park or walk down the sidewalk. And that’s what we were proposing in the House, and we’re also helping it with the mental health aspect.

It’s a tragedy that we could not get buy-in to pass those bills that in this situation would have put this individual under commitment because we would have changed the involuntary commitment clause. (emphasis added)

[FACT CHECK: The special session ended on August 29,  2023.

The House did not pass a bill in the Special Session that would have changed the involuntary commitment clause in current Tennessee statutes.

The bill that Sexton did not identify but says he brought to the floor in the first week of the special session, which he claimed was in the process to insert involuntary commitment clause changes, never received amendments to that effect.

The bill itself would have gone into effect October 1 if passed, and would have had no impact on Metro Nashville Davidson County Magistrate Stephen Holzapfel’s September 21/September 23 decision to set bond for Taylor on felony auto theft charges at a mere $10,000]

Matt Murphy: Cameron, incredible interview, incredible 20 minutes. Thank you for spending some time with us this Friday. Enjoy your Veterans Day. I know how much you appreciate those who serve Tennessee and this great United States of America. We appreciate you.

Listen to the complete audio of this interview here:

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Michael Patrick Leahy is the CEO and Editor-in-Chief of The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Tom Pappert, lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, contributed to this article.  Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].