Former Titans Scout Gets Two Consecutive Life Sentences

A Nashville judge ordered Blaise Taylor to serve two consecutive life sentences for poisoning his pregnant girlfriend with cocaine dissolved in alcohol.

Story Highlights

A jury convicted Taylor of murdering Jade Benning and her unborn child.
Prosecutors said Taylor spiked a drink with cocaine mixed in alcohol, causing fatal toxicity.
The judge cited calculated cruelty and abuse of private trust in stacking life terms.
Court records tie the case to a 2023 offense and a 2024 indictment and arrest.

Verdict And Sentence In The Nashville Murder Case

On July 1, 2026, a Davidson County jury found Blaise Taylor guilty on four counts tied to the deaths of Jade Benning and her unborn child. The counts included first-degree premeditated murder, felony murder, and second-degree murder, according to local reporting that covered the verdict and the charge mix. On sentencing, the court imposed two consecutive life terms. The court also addressed the additional second-degree count as part of the full judgment structure reported by outlets that followed the case.

At the sentencing hearing, the judge said Taylor’s actions showed calculation and extreme cruelty. The court also found he held a position of private trust with Benning, which aggravated the punishment. Based on those findings, the judge ordered the life terms to run one after the other, not at the same time. Prosecutors had asked for consecutive life sentences and the maximum term for the related second-degree murder conviction, and the court granted the core of that request.

How Prosecutors Said The Poisoning Happened

Prosecutors told jurors that Taylor poisoned Benning by dissolving cocaine in alcohol and giving it to her in her apartment. Medical examiners testified that her cause of death was a fatal combination of a large amount of cocaine mixed with alcohol, which can create cocaethylene in the body and heighten toxicity. Trial coverage described a pattern of messages from Taylor to Benning during the pregnancy, which the state said masked a plan to get access and carry out the poisoning.

The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department said Taylor was arrested after a grand jury indictment for the poisoning deaths. Police arrested him in Utah on March 14, 2024. Case records in Nashville list the matter as Case No. 2024-A-490, with an offense date of February 25, 2023, and a filing date in March 2024. These records anchor the timeline from the alleged poisoning to indictment and arrest. Taylor’s defense denied he poisoned Benning, and he plans to appeal the convictions.

Why This Case Resonates Beyond One Courtroom

This crime highlights a broader and grim trend: many homicides of pregnant women involve an intimate partner. Research reviews and public health data show that intimate partners are responsible for a large share of pregnancy-associated homicides, often about one-half or more when the offender is known. Some studies find pregnant or postpartum women are more likely to be killed than to die from common obstetric causes, making violence a leading risk in this period.

That context helps explain the force of the prosecution’s framing and the court’s sentencing choice. Prosecutors argued a deliberate, pregnancy-related poisoning. The judge found calculated cruelty and a breach of private trust, which supported stacking the life terms. For families watching a system they fear is too soft or too slow, this sentence reads as accountability. For others, it underscores a larger failure to prevent intimate-partner violence before it turns deadly, especially during pregnancy.

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— Rohan Arun (@RohanArun) September 10, 2026

The case also shows how public understanding can get muddled when different outlets report verdicts, parole rules, and sentencing structures in different ways. What matters in this judgment is simple and stark: two life terms will run back-to-back. The record ties the crime to early 2023, the indictment to March 2024, and the guilty verdict to July 2026, with sentencing that followed in September reporting. Taylor’s planned appeal will test the trial record, not the core tragedy.