Hennepin County seeks reduced sentence for man serving life term in 2011 shooting

The Hennepin County Attorney's Office is asking for a sentencing reduction for a man convicted for his role in the 2011 drive-by shooting death of a 13-year-old boy.

Kemen Taylor was 25 years old when he was driving a van with several passengers, two of whom admitted to shooting at three boys riding bikes in the Willard-Hay neighborhood of Minneapolis. Rayjon Gomez was shot and killed; a 12-year-old was injured and a 16-year-old was not injured. 

The two men who shot the boys, Derrick Catchings and Donquarius Copeland, took plea deals in exchange for a 410-month sentence. 

Taylor was found guilty of aiding and abetting first-degree premeditated murder after his case went to trial and was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. 

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty is arguing that the sentence "represents a miscarriage of justice" and is much longer than the time served by the two shooters. 

In court filings, Moriarty says her office would not indict Taylor on the first-degree charge if the case were to be prosecuted in the modern day. She is proposing a new sentence of 312 months.

The filings say that the state offered Taylor 234 months in prison for pleading guilty to one count of second-degree unintentional murder. Had he taken the offer, he would have been out on supervised release after 156 months, or 13 years.

Moriarty writes that Taylor could serve more than 40 years in prison, and is spending more than triple the offered 156 months behind bars "because he chose to exercise his constitutional right to a jury trial."

Taylor's conviction was upheld by the Minnesota Supreme Court in 2015, but his case was ultimately reviewed by the Conviction Integrity Unit in 2025.

Since his sentencing, Taylor has received his GED and taken courses on personal finance, public speaking, world religions and drawing. Moriarty's office says that while his prison record is not pristine,"nothing in that record suggests he would present a serious risk to the public upon release."