Former Inmate Facing 300 Years Behind Bars Learned He Had a Traumatic Brain Injury — Now He’s Helping Others (Exclusive)

After spending most of his life in and out of prison, Marchell Taylor faced the possibility of a 300-year sentence when he learned he had suffered an undiagnosed traumatic brain injury in a childhood car accident. From that moment, he says, “my life changed.” Along with Dr. Kim Gorgens, a neuropsychologist who helped treat him, Taylor, 55, now speaks on behalf of others with TBIs in and out of the prison system. Taylor shares her story in this week’s issue of PEOPLE magazine, on sale now.

Nine years ago Marchell Taylor walked into a Papa Johns store in Denver with a knife, looking for a way to pay for his next drug. Taylor, then 46, was on parole after spending nearly half his life in prison on drug and robbery charges.

He had only been out for 36 days when he held a pizzeria cashier at knifepoint and demanded money.

“I was a monster,” Taylor says of his past. “I was the guy people were afraid of.”

Taylor in prison in 2002, aged 29.

courtesy of Marchell Taylor

Today, as he sits in his Denver office where he connects community members with mental health services, Taylor is almost unrecognizable from the man he describes. With her wide smile, Taylor, 55, vibrates with energy and warmth, palpable even during video calls.

“When Marchell comes to his senses,” a colleague says of him, “he pours a bucket of love into your heart.”

Taylor’s journey from serial criminal to community health advocate began with a shocking revelation during a moment of crisis in 2016. While awaiting trial on robbery charges in a Denver jail, he was transferred to a pilot program designed by neuropsychologist and University of Denver professor Kim Gorgens, who reviewed inmates with traumatic brain injuries and connected them to individualized treatment.

Taylor learned that, like more than three-quarters of inmates in the county system, he suffered a TBI, which can have long-term effects on behavior. “It changed my thinking and my life forever,” says Taylor, who has since become a partner in Gorgens’ research. Together, they helped pass legislation in Colorado in 2021 to fund a pilot program for state prisons, similar to the one he says saved him.

“For all his tragedy, he built something,” Gorgens says of Taylor. “He is a force of kindness in the community. He beats the odds and makes a difference, one person at a time.”

Taylor (center) with her mother and siblings in 1979.

courtesy of Marchell Taylor

Taylor’s history of trauma goes back to his childhood growing up near Flint, Mich. His father, a Vietnam veteran, was addicted to heroin and beat his mother in front of Marchello.

After his parents separated, his mother’s boyfriend introduced Taylor to alcohol at the age of 9. In the same year, he had a car accident with his mother and smashed his head on the dashboard. “They stitched me up, sent me on my way,” he says of the injury he later learned was the cause of his TBI.

Taylor at the age of 9, the year he had a car accident.

courtesy of Marchell Taylor

The accident marked a change in his behavior. “I didn’t have the ability to regulate my emotions,” he recalls. “I became brisk and violent.” By 10, he was breaking into cars. When he was 12, his mother suffered a stroke and was left partially paralyzed, so she sent Marchell to live with his father in the Denver area. Two years later, he was arrested for the first time for stealing a pack of cigarettes from 7-Eleven. When his dad picked him up from juvenile detention, he stopped by the liquor store, grabbed a bottle of Mad Dog to share between the two, and told Marchello, “You shouldn’t get caught. It should be more polished than that.”

After dropping out of school in the ninth grade, Taylor got away with a string of robberies before serving his first real sentence in 1993 in Las Vegas for stealing a purse. That began a cycle of prison, parole and reoffending until he was sentenced to 25 years for a 1998 bank robbery.

He was only a month out of prison on parole when he was caught breaking out of Papa Johns. Back in prison, facing the possibility of a 300-year prison sentence because of his long record, Taylor was distraught and suicidal. When his public defender played security footage of the robbery, Taylor was in tears. “I didn’t know how I ended up there,” he says. “My heart was broken. I just thought, ‘Why am I doing this?'”

While awaiting trial, his public defender was able to move Taylor to a pilot mental health program at the county jail where one of Gorgens’ students gave him a TBI screening, an assessment interview that is part of the Colorado Brain Injury Model. The Gorgens model is now used in the criminal justice systems of more than twenty states. “I was traveling blind, and she opened my eyes to how to live a healthier life,” Taylor says of Gorgens, whom she calls “our wonder woman of brain science.”

Taylor and University of Denver neuropsychologist Dr. Kimberly Gorgens.

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After his TBI was identified, Taylor began dialectical and cognitive behavioral therapy and learned meditation techniques to control impulsivity. Gorgens’ students offered grief counseling. “It was like an exorcism where they were pulling these things out of me,” Taylor says. “I was able to rewire my brain.”

Taylor finally met Gorgens five years ago after reading the text of a bill he wrote to expand her pilot program. “Marchell thought his whole life that he was trash and that he was destined to spend his life in prison,” she says. “For him to realize, ‘I could be valuable’ and be able to make a difference, that’s profound.”

Taylor, Gorgens and Shively (LR) with Colorado Gov. Jared Polis sign a bill they co-authored to fund a TBI screening program in 2021.

Courtesy of Dr. Kimberly Gorgens

But, she emphasizes, the idea that biological factors can influence behavior is not a get-out-of-jail-free ticket. “It’s about accountability,” she says. “We give someone strategies and a way of thinking about their behavior as fixable.”

As Taylor learned about his own brain, he organized his fellow inmates and, with the help of friend and former inmate Corey Shively, who ran a marketing business, launched the Rebuild Your Mind Challenge, a viral campaign to encourage those working in the criminal justice system and beyond. to make short videos about their struggles with mental health. His advocacy so impressed the judge that when Taylor took the plea deal, he sentenced him to 16 years of probation with eight years of mental illness probation. Taylor ends his probation next year.

Taylor (right) with friend and business partner Corey Shively.

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After returning home for good in 2018, Taylor and Shively, who learned he too had TBI, started a company, AYBOS Advocacy, offering TBI screenings (both are trained to administer the test) and connecting community members to treatment. “People need this,” says Shively. Realizing how deeply TBI has affected their community “changed all of our lives,” he says.

And now Taylor acts as a mentor and guest speaker at Gorgens’ lectures every semester. “He and Corey became an integral part of those courses,” says Gorgens.

Taylor (foreground), friend and business partner Corey Shively (right), prof. Kim Gorgens and students at the University of Denver.

courtesy of Marchell Taylor

“My life is amazing,” says Taylor, who also works as a peer counselor at a mental health center. His fiancee (whom he calls his wife), Crotisha, is a medical technician, and although Taylor lost two of his three sons to fentanyl overdoses, the couple enjoys time with their 18 grandchildren in total. “I moved away from my old self. I have moved on from the trauma and am making progress. I have the tools to deal with my trauma and I can help others. And that helps me.”

TBI in prisons: What research shows

Less than 10 percent of the general public has experienced a brain injury, but an estimated 50 percent of those in the criminal justice system suffer from a traumatic brain injury. University of Denver neuropsychologist Kim Gorgens says the number is even higher for certain incarcerated populations: Her studies show that 80 percent of those in Colorado county jails and up to 97 percent of female repeat offenders have a TBI.

“It’s not that brain injury causes incarceration, but for people with vulnerable brains” — people who may have been exposed to childhood abuse or neglect — “if they suffer a brain injury, the risk is much higher for poor outcomes, including incarceration.”

A history of brain injury also increases the chances that an individual will reoffend, Gorgens says. Targeted therapy reduces the risk of recidivism. And, she says, training people who work in the criminal justice system is critical, because what looks like noncompliance can be the effect of a TBI.

Gorgens suggests simple changes that can help. “With someone who is inattentive, make eye contact before telling them to leave the cell so you know they are paying attention. Someone with a poor memory also benefits from written instructions,” she explains. “Once you see this problem and how treatable it is, you can’t unsee it.” For more information about TBI and to take the TBI test online, visit: www.nashia.org or www.biausa.org

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Source: HIS Education