Taylor Parker became the youngest woman on Texas’s execution row after a murder that stunned the country in 2020, as revealed in Netflix’s new true crime series, Maternal Instincts. Taylor Parker is still awaiting execution in Texas, but she does not currently have an execution date.
Parker, now 33, remains on death row at the Patrick L. O’Daniel Unit in Gatesville after she was convicted in 2022 of capital murder in the killing of 21-year-old Reagan Simmons-Hancock and the abduction of Simmons-Hancock’s unborn baby.
Parker was sentenced to death in November 2022. Prosecutors said she spent months faking a pregnancy before attacking Simmons-Hancock at her home in New Boston, Texas, in October 2020. Investigators said Parker cut the baby from Simmons-Hancock’s womb and then tried to pass the infant off as her own. The baby, Braxlynn Sage, died shortly after.
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Why does Taylor Parker have no execution date yet?
Parker’s case is still moving through the long post-conviction process that follows a death sentence in Texas.
Parker was found guilty of capital murder in October 2022. She received a death sentence a month later.
On appeal, attorneys claimed that Parker should not have been charged with capital murder since the baby might not have been alive when she was removed from the mother’s womb, making the aggravating offense of kidnapping irrelevant because it is impossible to kidnap an unborn person.
Additionally, they argued that Parker’s trial was unfair due to widespread media attention and social media criticism during the sentencing phase.
The Guardian reported this month that Parker’s appeals have so far failed to overturn her conviction or death sentence. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals maintained her crime, conviction, and sentence; last month, the US Supreme Court declared it would not consider her case because she was not given a fair trial. There is no set date for the execution.
Parker has exhausted her direct appeals, but no execution date can be set until her habeas corpus review is complete. That process, which moves through state and federal courts, can take years.
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Taylor Parker in Maternal Instincts
Maternal Instinct premiered on Netflix on June 12.
The documentary explores the crime that made headlines in Texas in October 2020. Parker, who was 27 at the time, claimed to have given birth after being stopped by a state trooper while traveling to the hospital.
But after being evaluated by medical professionals, it was evident that Parker had not recently given birth as she had stated.
Parker had undergone a hysterectomy more than five years before the birth of her second child. In an effort to pass off the child as her own, Parker killed Simmons-Hancock in her house and took her unborn child by force.
Maternal Instinct depicts how Parker’s deceit resulted in horrifying violence through film clips and conversations with people who knew her.