CADDO PARISH, La. (KTAL/KMSS) — A Frierson man accused of knifing a romantic rival in 2020 was found guilty of second-degree murder in Caddo District Court Tuesday.

According to a media release from the Caddo District Attorney’s Office, the six-man, six-woman jury in District Judge Donald E. Hathaway Jr.’s court took 30 minutes to unanimously convict 37-year-old Cortney Fitzgerald Taylor in the September 7, 2020 slaying of Derrick Dewayne Taylor.

When Taylor entered the Marion Street apartment of a former girlfriend, he found her asleep with the 46-year-old and knifed him in the heart as he slept.

The knife punctured the right ventricle of Derrick Taylor’s heart, and he bled to death. Although the sleeping former girlfriend did not see the assailant, surveillance video captured him entering and leaving the apartment.

Taylor fled the murder scene, and when U.S. Marshals attempted to arrest him in December 2020, he shot at the officers and evaded capture. However, he was arrested a short time later in Bossier City without incident.        

Cortney made a phone call from jail to the woman in which he implicated himself in the murder by repeatedly stating that she could not testify against him because she was asleep at the time of the attack. 

When Cortney Taylor returns to Judge Hathaway’s court on June 22, he faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole, probation, or suspension of sentence.