On parole for manslaughter in the 1994 death of an earlier girlfriend, Morris Taylor Jr. beat his current girlfriend in the head with a hammer earlier this year.

And for that, the 60-year-old was sentenced Friday in Allen Superior Court to 15 years in prison.

Last week, Taylor tried to rescind his guilty plea to felony aggravated battery. But Allen Superior Court Judge John Surbeck accepted the plea Friday and sentenced him to a total of 18 years in prison, but suspended three years and ordered that to be served on probation.

According to Taylor’s attorney, Quinton Ellis, Taylor believed that Ellis knew the victim of the battery, who once worked with Ellis’ mother. Ellis said he had never met her and it had no effect on the outcome of the case. Prosecutors argued that Taylor had been extremely manipulative of the system. At the time he beat his girlfriend with a hammer in July, causing multiple injuries to her head, Taylor was out on parole for a Marion County voluntary manslaughter from 1994.