Former NFL Scout Gets Two Life Sentences For Awful Crime
This article was originally published on Total Pro Sports.
A former NFL scout for the Tennessee Titans will spend the rest of his life in prison after a Nashville judge stacked two life terms.
Blaise Taylor, 30, received consecutive life sentences Wednesday for the 2023 deaths of Jade Benning and their unborn daughter, Ivy. A jury convicted him July 1 of first-degree murder and felony murder after finding he poisoned Benning during a date at her apartment.
Prosecutors said Taylor, who scouted for the Titans from 2019 to 2023, put a lethal dose of cocaine in her drink because he did not want to be a father. Benning was five months pregnant. She died March 6, 2023, at Vanderbilt University Medical Center on her 25th birthday.
Judge Steve Dozier could have run the sentences together and left a parole window after 51 years, but he refused. Consecutive terms mean Taylor would need 102 years before any release, which can be framed as a life-without-parole result in practice.
NFL Scout Gets Consecutive Life Terms
More than 80 people sent the court letters calling Taylor a man of honor and faith. Nashville assistant district attorney Jan Norman used those letters against him in open court.
“Your honor, the defense just submitted 87 letters all speaking to Mr. Taylor’s character,” Norman said. “They describe a man of honor, honesty, a man of great accomplishments and as someone who has faith in the Lord and was raised by a strong family. More than one of the authors of those letters actually stated he is someone they would want their own daughters to marry. The person described in these character letters, the authors themselves, not one mentioned Jade Benning, not one of them mentioned baby Ivy, and not one single letter out of the 87 letters mentioned anything about what Blaise Taylor did.”
Dozier said the crime showed calculation, not a sudden loss of control.
“What occurred on this particular night shows a level of cruelty, a level of calculation, a level of inhumanity that’s deeper than just some impulsive, reckless thoughts,” the judge said.
He added that both victims deserved their own punishment.
Norman also told the court Taylor had considered poisoning another woman years earlier to end a pregnancy. The judge called the sentencing burden Taylor’s to carry, not the court’s.
NFL Scout’s Defense Already Plans An Appeal
Taylor left the hearing in an orange jumpsuit without looking at his family. Attorney Letitia Quinones-Hollins called the sentence harsh and the trial flawed.
“We are extremely disappointed but not surprised by the harsh sentence,” she said. “This was a flawed trial of a tenuous case, and we will appeal and look forward to doing so.”
At the time of the killing, the former NFL scout had already left Nashville for a senior defensive analyst job at Utah State. The Titans chapter of his résumé is now a footnote to the court file.
