US Supreme Court Won’t Take Up Fetal Abduction Death Penalty Case

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Last week the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the conviction and death sentence for a woman convicted of capital murder in the deaths of a pregnant New Boston, Texas, woman and her unborn baby.

The court denied the petition from Taylor Rene Parker in a one line entry on the case docket without explanation. The ruling from the nation’s highest court puts an end to Parker’s direct appeal of her 2022 conviction and death sentence.

Parker, now 33, was 27 at the time of the murders.

Parker, who has also used the surnames Morton and Wacasey, was sentenced to death for the Oct. 9, 2020, killings of 21-year-old Reagan Hancock and her infant daughter, Braxylnn, by a Bowie County jury following a weeks-long trial in the fall of 2022.

Parker befriended Hancock while also stalking other pregnant women and girls as she faked a pregnancy in 2020. Early on the day of the murders, Parker went to Hancock’s home in New Boston and attacked her, leaving behind a grisly crime scene and taking baby Braxlynn with her. Hancock’s older daughter, a toddler, was in another room of the home during the deadly attack.

Parker was pulled over as she drove toward the Oklahoma border, planning to tell hospital personnel there that she had given birth on the roadside. Sadly, both mother and child died from the attack.

Parker was soon charged with capital murder and brought back to Bowie County to face the charges.

Parker is not completely out of options. She can begin state habeas proceedings and argue that circumstances outside the trial record – such as ineffective assistance of counsel – are cause to grant her post-conviction relief. Those proceedings begin in the trial court, which must make findings that it presents to the Court of Criminal Appeals, the highest criminal court in the Lone Star State.

If all state relief is denied, Parker can take her case to a federal court to argue that her rights under the Constitution have been violated. From there the case can again wind its way to the U.S. Supreme Court and if relief is again denied there, Parker can seek executive clemency from the Texas governor.

Once all appeals have been exhausted, the trial court may set a date for execution.

Parker is currently being held at the O’Daniel Unit in Gatesville, Texas.