Kalila Taylor has been convicted of murder for a second time in the 1996 death of Riverhead teenager Curtisha Morning.
The jury began deliberations at about 1:30 Monday afternoon and returned a verdict before 5 p.m., according Robert Clifford, a spokesman for Suffolk District Attorney Thomas Spota.
Taylor’s retrial began June 11. An appellate court overturned her 1999 conviction in 2004, ruling that the trial court gave the jury faulty instructions. The defendant is now 35 years old.
Morning, a 17-year-old senior at Riverhead High School, mysteriously vanished on Feb. 29, 1996. Her body, which had been stabbed 94 times, was found a month later in a wooded area near the high school’s athletic field.
Police arrested Taylor, then 20, for the murder in June 1997.
Prosecutors said Taylor killed Morning in a jealous rage over a boy who was the father of Taylor’s child.
Photo caption: 1997 mug shot of Kalila Taylor
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