State Missouri v. Wayland Oliver Taylor

Charged with murder in the second degree in shooting Larry Eugene Oliver, a jury found the appellant Wayland Oliver Taylor guilty of manslaughter and fixed his punishment at the maximum, ten years' imprisonment. RSMo 1969, § 559.140. In brief the circumstances were that on July 14, 1970, Oliver and his five adherents, including Philanders Brown, went to Volker Park to ""mess around with them hippies."" Some days previously Philanders and three or four others had been to the Agee Country Club in Wyandotte County, Kansas, and there became engaged in a rhubarb with another group of boys, chiefly with Taylor's young halfbrother, over whether Ricky and his friends had rifled the pocketbooks of two girls at the next table. In the course of the argument all or most of them wound up in the ""men's room"" and someone, perhaps Philanders, had shoved or slapped Ricky and someone in Ricky's group claimed that a gun had been displayed. Finally the proprietor of the ""country club"" ejected all the disputants.