By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
CHEHALIS – A mother holding her baby and another mother who has lost her only child sat on opposite sides of the courtroom this morning as 29-year-old James W. Taylor faced a judge for the second time this week in connection with last year’s alcohol-poisoning death of Onalaska teenager Nickolas Barnes.
James W. Taylor
“My client is a father of four, has a full time job and had never been in trouble with the law,” Centralia attorney Don Blair told the judge.
Taylor was locked up Tuesday after he was summoned to Lewis County Superior Court more than a year after Nickolas, 15, died after playing drinking games with vodka at an underage party in Taylor’s Onalaska home.
Blair asked Judge James Lawler to lower Taylor’s bail. Deputy Prosecutor Steve Scott opposed the request. Lawler reduced bail to $10,000.
Taylor is charged with second-degree manslaughter, furnishing liquor to minors and failing to summon assistance.
Nickolas Barnes
Prosecutors allege Taylor purchased beer and allowed nine teenagers to drink the night of Sept. 18 last year. Charging documents say after Nickolas and a 16-year-old boy downed more than 11 shots of vodka, Nickolas passed out in the front yard, where his friends removed his clothes and wrote on his body with a black marker.
Prosecutors allege Taylor told the teenagers to “let him sleep it off.”
The Onalaska High School sophomore died in a hospital on Sept. 21. Prosecutors say Nickolas’s blood alcohol level was .32, which is four times the amount which an adult would be illegally intoxicated if driving.
In the audience for Taylor’s arraignment was his wife, holding the child and Nickolas’s mother, uncle and grandmother.
He pleaded not guilty to each of the nine charges.
A trial date has not been set. Taylor was released from jail at mid-day today.
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Read “Remembering Nickolas Barnes” from Thursday Sept. 23, 2010 here
Tags: By Sharyn L. Decker, news reporter