Andre Taylor appears in the forthcoming documentary American Pimp, but he's also going to appear in an extended engagement of another kind - 5 ½ years in prison for transporting a teenage prostitute. He'll also pay a $10,000 fine.
"If they're going to bring juveniles in - children - and risk their lives," says assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas O'Connell, "we're going to prosecute them." He says this was the first time federal prosecutors in Nevada brought a variety of charges against any pimp to guarantee a harsh sentence.
Taylor was convicted last September of three counts of transporting a minor for prostitution, two counts of transporting a woman for prostitution, and two counts of money laundering. The last involved charges he used his prostitution ring's proceeds to promote his business.
However, the counts involving transportation of two women were dismissed before Taylor was sentenced. That cut the range of his potential sentence to between 57-71 months. The judge said the prosecution used the wrong part of the law to charge Taylor with those counts.
Going by the name of Gorgeous Dre, Taylor was interviewed for American Pimp in 1997, while living in San Francisco. Allen and Albert Hughes, creators of Menace II Society and Dead Presidents, directed American Pimp, which premiered at last year's Sundance Film Festival. The small Seventh Art Releasing company from Los Angeles has American theatrical distribution rights to the film, which studies the ways and means of pimps in the United States.
The film is scheduled for its American release in New York and Los Angeles in early May, with a Las Vegas premiere likely by late May or early June. Allen Hughes, in fact, testified "reluctantly" for the prosecution at Taylor's trial. The trial featured unedited videotape of Hughes's interview with Taylor.
In that interview, Taylor claimed he was a retired pimp now pursuing a rap music career, speaking in the past tense of his life as a pimp. But prosecutors said he never really retired, providing money, transportation, and housing for the prostitutes who worked for him while using their income to support a very lavish lifestyle.
Taylor will have the twenty months he served in state custody for another charge to which he pleaded guilty deducted from his federal sentence.
Testifying in court Thursday, Taylor said society told him he was "born from the womb of a prostitute from the seed of a pimp," explaining his childhood's influence on him. His father, Mel, wrote the judge a letter saying his son was "no more a pimp now than I am."
The younger Taylor took up pimping at age 23. He told the judge he knows now pandering is wrong and "an immoral thing before God," and that he now has a new life with his wife, Athena - to whom he turned and said, "Be strong, honey."
