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Thread: Cecil Emile Davis - Washington

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    Cecil Emile Davis - Washington


    Yoshiko Couch, 65




    Summary of Offense:

    Davis was sentenced to death in Pierce County on February 23, 1998 for raping and killing 65-year-old Yoshiko Couch of Tacoma in 1997. After Davis' sentence was overturned by the Washington Supreme Court on November 4, 2004, he was again sentenced to death on May 18, 2007.

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    Supreme Court upholds death penalty in 1997 murder

    The Washington Supreme Court has upheld the death penalty for a man convicted of randomly killing and raping a 65-year-old woman while her disabled husband was in the house.

    The court issued its decision Thursday on Cecil Davis' appeal stemming from his conviction of killing Yoshiko Couch in 1997.

    Davis had appealed the death sentence because jurors had seen him in shackles during his first trail. In 2004, the Supreme Court vacated his sentence and Davis was re-tried in 2007, when he again was found guilty and sentenced to death.

    Two justices dissented from the ruling Thursday saying that while Davis' crime was brutal, similar crimes have been punished with life in prison without chance of parole and not the death sentence.

    http://www.king5.com/news/crime/Supr...170547416.html
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    In today's United States Supreme Court orders, Davis' petition for writ of certiorari was DENIED.

    Lower Ct: Supreme Court of Washington
    Case Nos.: (80209-2)
    Decision Date: September 20, 2012
    Rehearing Denied: January 10, 2013
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    Execution date set for Tacoma killer, but more appeals likely

    A Pierce County judge Thursday assigned a Tacoma killer a date with the executioner, but Cecil Davis is expected to appeal again before that day arrives.

    Superior Court Judge Ronald Culpepper set Dec. 17 as the date Davis, 54, should be executed and gave the twice-convicted killer until Dec. 1 to decide whether he wants to hang or be injected with a lethal cocktail of chemicals.

    But deputy prosecutor John Neeb, who prosecuted Davis, said he expects the defendant's defense team to file appeals paperwork before then and obtain a stay of execution.

    Two juries have decided that Davis should die for murdering 65-year-old Tacoma resident Yoshiko Couch in 1997 while her invalid husband was in the house but unable to help her.

    The first death sentence was overturned on appeal, but the second was upheld by the state Supreme Court last year. Davis' lawyers took his case to the U.S. Supreme Court, but it declined to hear the case, court records show.

    Neeb said Davis has other avenues of appeal despite those rulings and likely would exhaust them.

    Davis also was convicted of murdering Jane Hungerford-Trapp in a separate case. He's serving a life sentence for that conviction.

    http://www.thenewstribune.com/2013/1...#storylink=cpy
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    Family confronts killer they call a 'monster'

    The man who raped and murdered a 65-year-old Tacoma woman in 1997 now has his execution date set.

    But prosecutors warn that while execution is scheduled for Dec.17, Cecil Davis will likely stay alive for years as the case moves through appeals.

    The prosecutor originally asked execution to be set for Jan. 25, the 17th anniversary of Yoshiko Couch's horrific murder in her Tacoma home. However, certain laws around when the paperwork was received forced the date to be much sooner.

    Davis declined to say anything in court.

    "The method of execution shall be by intravenous injection or at your election if you wish, hanging by the neck until you're dead.," Judge Ron Culpepper informed him.

    "We rarely seek the death penalty and when we do it's in the most egregious of cases," Pierce County prosecutor Mark Lindquist said.

    Seventy-eight people, all men, have been executed in Washington since 1904, the date the state uses as a reference point.

    Right now eight men, including Davis, are waiting on death row.

    The most recent execution was Cal Brown in 2010 for the torture, rape and murder of a Burien woman, Holly Washa, almost two decades before.

    Lindquist doesn't expect Davis' execution for another five to 10 years.

    "You're saying there are many other steps he can take still?" KIRO 7 said.

    "He's exhausted one level of appeals -- but there's another level, and then another level," he said.

    "You cannot bring the person back under our system of justice," defense attorney Eric Nielsen said. "We give every opportunity for somebody to fight for their life."

    Death penalty cases are costly. The state spent more than $97,000 just on the physical execution of Brown in September, not counting the all the other court costs from appeals.

    http://www.kirotv.com/news/news/fami...monster/nb2GF/
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    California man sues state for not executing family's killer sentenced to death decades ago

    30 years after the murder of his mother, sister and 2 nephews, a California man is suing that state for not executing the killer, even though he was sentenced to death.

    It has some people in Washington state wondering if they can pursue the same option.

    Kermit Alexander said he trusted in the legal system for years. But, the killer is still sitting in prison decades later. Because of that, Alexander filed a lawsuit demanding California put in place an execution protocol and end the murderer's life.

    Alexander won a small victory last month when a superior court judge agreed that he had standing to bring the action, so there will be a hearing on the merits of the suit.

    Washington state Governor Jay Inslee put a moratorium on the death penalty last year, but the California case has some Washington families looking at their options.

    Jane Hungerford Trapp was found dead at the top of a stairwell in Tacoma in 1996. Cecil Davis was convicted of her murder, and another, and was sentenced to death.

    20 years later, Davis remains in the state penitentiary in Walla Walla.

    "We grew up learning that if you break the law, the law will punish you," said Kathy Obert, Hungerford-Trapp's niece. "Where is his punishment? He gets a new free home, paid for by us. This is just outrageously wrong."

    Obert said her family will be following the California case closely as they work to figure out if there are any other options when it comes to getting Davis executed.

    Jessie Ripley is Hungerford Trapp's daughter. She said it's been exceptionally difficult having her children grow up without a grandmother and spending most of her adult life without a mom.

    "He (Davis) doesn't get to say, 'Oh I wish I could see my family,' because, guess what? His family can go visit him. I don't get any of that. My children don't get any of that," Ripley said. "I'm sitting here working. My family is sitting here working to support him in a prison. Somebody who took something from us. Now I have to support him? Where's the justice in that."

    Governor Jay Inslee's office declined comment on this story, but it is expected that as long as he is in office, the moratorium on the death penalty in the state will remain in place.

    http://deathpenaltynews.blogspot.com...#ixzz3TWuYyTSY
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    Washington Death Row Inmate Loses Court Challenge Over Intellectual Disabilities

    On January 25, 1997, Cecil Emile Davis, a “violent offender” on state supervision, broke into the Tacoma home of 65-year-old Yoshiko Couch. Once inside he raped and beat her and then suffocated her by holding a rag soaked in cleaning solvents over her mouth.

    Davis was later convicted of aggravated first degree murder and sentenced to death.

    On Thursday, the Washington Supreme Court rejected Davis’ claim that Washington’s death penalty system is unconstitutional because it doesn’t protect death row inmates with intellectual disabilities—sometimes referred to in the courts as “mental retardation”—from execution.

    “We find his arguments unpersuasive and dismiss the petition,” Justice Steven Gonzalez wrote in a majority opinion signed by six of the nine justices.

    Washington law and the U.S. Constitution prohibit executing someone who’s intellectually disabled. In Washington, that determination is made by the trial judge after a guilty verdict is rendered.

    At trial, Davis argued that the jury, not the judge, should have to find beyond a reasonable doubt that he didn’t have an intellectual disability. The trial judge rejected that motion.

    At sentencing, Davis’ lawyer made the case for mercy based on a variety of issues including “low intelligence,” but did not make the case that Davis had an intellectual disability that constitutionally excluded him from the death penalty.

    Nor did Davis make that case on appeal. In fact, his attorney wrote, “Davis does not claim he is intellectually disabled or that he was intellectually disabled at the time of the crime.”

    However, in 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court found that Florida’s death penalty system failed to use the appropriate criteria for determining intellectual disability, thus creating the risk that inmates with intellectual disabilities would be executed. Based on that ruling Davis argued to the Washington Supreme Court that Washington law, which is similar to Florida’s, “creates an unacceptable barrier to proof of intellectual disability.”

    Under Washington law, a defendant must have an IQ of 70 or below before the court will consider whether there’s an intellectual disability. A doctor in Davis’ case testified that he had an IQ score of 68, although other tests indicated he might have a higher score.

    In their majority opinion, the justices allowed that Washington law may have similar flaws to Florida’s, but concluded that wasn’t a factor in Davis’ case.

    “Essentially, Davis argues that he is entitled to resentencing since [the Florida case] makes clear that using a 70 IQ as an evidentiary cutoff is unconstitutional,” the majority wrote. While that test might not be constitutional, the Washington justices concluded that Davis wasn’t harmed by it because his intellectual capacity was, in fact, considered by the court.

    “Davis has not established that our death penalty statute, or his sentence, was unconstitutional,” concluded the majority.

    The justices also rejected Davis’ assertion that a jury, not a judge, should determine intellectual disability.

    However, in a concurring opinion, Justice Sheryl Gordon McCloud argued that the Supreme Court should give more attention to the question of how an intellectual disability is determined.

    “This is a complex constitutional issue … we have the obligation to explore,” McCloud wrote in an opinion also signed by Justice Mary Fairhurst.

    In a lone dissent, Justice Barbara Madsen took the opposite view. She argued that Davis’ death sentence should be reversed on the grounds that the judge, not the jury, decided whether he was intellectually disabled. Madsen said Washington law requiring the court to make that determination violated Davis’ Sixth Amendment rights, based on the 2014 U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the Florida death penalty case.

    Madsen also said that Davis’ IQ score of 68 cannot be disregarded. “That evidence alone creates a fact question as to whether Davis suffered from an intellectual disability,” Madsen wrote.

    In a statement, Pierce County Prosecutor Mark Lindquist said, “Davis’ crimes shocked the conscience of our community. We hope this brings closure for the community, especially the family and friends of Yoshiko Couch.”

    Davis, who’s African American, is one of seven men on death row in Washington. However, the state is not carrying out executions because of a moratorium imposed by Gov. Jay Inslee in 2014.

    The Washington Supreme Court has another case pending that could test the constitutionality of the death penalty. Lawyers for death row inmate Allen Eugene Gregory, who is also African American, are challenging the state’s capital punishment statute on the grounds that it is “infected with arbitrariness and racial bias.”

    http://kuow.org/post/washington-deat...l-disabilities
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    On May 24, 2017, Davis filed a habeas petition in Federal District Court.

    https://dockets.justia.com/docket/wa...cv00808/245836
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    "They will hurt you. They will hurt your grandma, these people. The root cause of this is there's no discipline in the homes, they don't go to school, you know, they live off the government, no personal accountability, and they just beat people up for no reason, and it's disgusting." - Former Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters

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    Washington Supreme Court tosses out state’s death penalty

    OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) — Washington state’s Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the death penalty, as applied, violates its Constitution.

    The ruling Thursday makes Washington the latest state to do away with capital punishment. The court was unanimous in its order that the eight people currently on death row have their sentences converted to life in prison. Five justices said the “death penalty is invalid because it is imposed in an arbitrary and racially biased manner.”

    “Given the manner in which it is imposed, the death penalty also fails to serve any legitimate penological goals,” the justices wrote.

    Four other justices, in a concurrence, wrote that while they agreed with the majority’s conclusions and invalidation of the death penalty, “additional state constitutional principles compel this result.”

    Gov. Jay Inslee, a one-time supporter of capital punishment, had imposed a moratorium on the death penalty in 2014, saying that no executions would take place while he’s in office.

    In a written statement, Inslee called the ruling “a hugely important moment in our pursuit for equal and fair application of justice.”

    “The court makes it perfectly clear that capital punishment in our state has been imposed in an ‘arbitrary and racially biased manner,’ is ‘unequally applied’ and serves no criminal justice goal,” Inslee wrote.

    The ruling was in the case of Allen Eugene Gregory, who was convicted of raping, robbing and killing Geneine Harshfield, a 43-year-old woman, in 1996.

    His lawyers said the death penalty is arbitrarily applied and that it is not applied proportionally, as the state Constitution requires.

    In its ruling Thursday, the high court did not reconsider any of Gregory’s arguments pertaining to guilty, noting that his conviction for aggravated first degree murder “has already been appealed and affirmed by this court.”

    https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle...death-penalty/
    Don't ask questions, just consume product and then get excited for next products.

    "They will hurt you. They will hurt your grandma, these people. The root cause of this is there's no discipline in the homes, they don't go to school, you know, they live off the government, no personal accountability, and they just beat people up for no reason, and it's disgusting." - Former Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters

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