Page 2 of 2 FirstFirst 12
Results 11 to 16 of 16

Thread: Barry Trynell Davis, Jr. - Florida

  1. #11
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    State Seeks Death Penalty in Barry Davis Murder Trial

    Wednesday began the 3-day penalty phase in the Barry Davis murder trial.

    Monday, a jury found Davis guilty on 14 counts for murdering John Hughes and Hiedi Rhodes in 2012.

    During the penalty phase, jurors will hear from Davis' family and the victims' families, who will recommend or not recommend the death penalty for Davis.

    The judge will make the final decision.

    Davis' father took the stand and talked about his son being award with the Bay County Sheriff's Office "Do the Right Thing Award" for saving a drowning man.

    "They gave him like a $500 scholarship and a certificate," Barry Davis, Sr. said. "It was on television and the newspaper and everything. Actually they interviewed him."

    "Did he maintain a relationship with that man," asked Davis' defense attorney.

    "Yes, yes," Davis, Sr. said.

    Davis' uncle also took the stand. Mental health experts for both the defense and prosecution will testify during this process.

    (Source: WJHG News)
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

  2. #12
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Germany
    Posts
    13,014
    Doctors: Early brain injuries could have contributed to Davis’ killings

    By TOM McLAUGHLIN
    GateHouse Media Services

    DeFUNIAK SPRINGS — Barry Davis’ defense team is counting on his abnormal brain to keep him out of a cell on Florida’s death row.

    Expert witnesses in the fields of clinical psychology and neuropathology testified Thursday that head injuries Davis suffered at an early age had caused traumatic brain injuries. Those injuries could well have turned him aggressive and affected his judgment and impulse control.

    Coupled with growing up mostly unloved on the mean streets of Los Angeles, anxiety and depression brought on by a failing relationship and injuries Davis suffered playing football, boxing and in ATV accidents created a deeply disturbed individual, doctors Julie Harper and Joseph Wu told jurors.

    The testimony, solicited by attorney Michelle Hendrix, came on the second day of the death penalty phase of Davis’ trial. He was convicted Monday of killing South Walton County resident John Gregory Hughes and his girlfriend, Hiedi Ann Rhodes of Panama City Beach.

    Brain injuries to a young person are potentially more harmful later in life because the brain still is developing, Wu told jurors. A PET scan of Davis’ brain indicated an abnormal frontal lobe area, he testified.

    “The frontal lobe is most susceptible to brain injuries that impact judgment and impulse control,” he said. “A damaged frontal lobe is like driving a car when the brakes aren’t working.”

    Outside factors such as the environment one grows up in can exacerbate problems stemming from the brain injuries, Wu told the jury.

    “I think Mr. Davis has several factors present,” he testified.

    On cross-examination, prosecutor Bobby Elmore confirmed that Wu was well briefed in the grisly details of the murders of Hughes and Rhodes, including the beatings they suffered, the effort to make sure they were dead by placing their heads in a bathtub and the dismembering and burning of their bodies.

    “Do you believe these deaths were the results of an impulse action?” Elmore asked.

    Wu mostly shied from answering what he termed Elmore’s “philosophical” questions. But when asked if a person with traumatic brain injury can understand that it’s wrong to murder, he answered, “there’s a different type of knowing.”

    “You can know murder is wrong but have the inability to regulate certain impulses,” Wu said.

    Today is expected to be the last day of testimony in the second phase of what has been a four-week trial. The jury then will be asked to return with a recommendation to have Davis either sentenced to death or to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

    Walton County Circuit Judge Kelvin Wells will impose the sentence, but by law he must give great weight to the jury’s recommendation.

    http://www.newsherald.com/news/crime...lings-1.481281

  3. #13
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Germany
    Posts
    13,014
    Jury recommends death for Davis

    By TOM McLAUGHLIN
    GateHouse Media Services

    DeFUNIAK SPRINGS — Barry Davis believed he could get away with murder.

    He had said as much to his girlfriend, Tiffani Steward, some time after he killed John Gregory Hughes and Hiedi Rhodes the night of May 7, 2012, according to her testimony at Davis’ trial.

    And while he might have gotten closer to it than most, or was at least able to stave off justice for a while, Davis was found guilty Monday on two counts of first-degree murder, along with 15 other theft-related charges.

    A jury recommended Friday that he die for both killings.

    “We have waited a long time for this day to come. Barry Davis is an evil person. Hopefully, our families will be able to finally have some closure. I feel that justice has been served,” Susan Hughes, Greg Hughes, first cousin, said after the recommendations were presented.

    “Barry Davis has committed a heinous crime and he brutally took away our loved ones,” added Amy Hughes, Greg Hughes’ sister. “Today, we are satisfied with the jury’s recommendation of punishment to the fullest extent of the law.”

    After more than a year of investigation, Davis was charged with the murders of Hughes and Rhodes in early 2013. The Walton County Sheriff’s Office alleged he beat and strangled the couple at Hughes’ home in Santa Rosa Beach, then left them face down in a bathtub to drown.

    The jury of seven women and five men recommended by a 9-3 vote that Davis be put to death for the murder of Hughes and by a 10-2 count that he die for killing Rhodes, who prosecuting attorney Bobby Elmore had characterized as an innocent killed only because she happened to be present when Davis killed and robbed Hughes.

    Circuit Judge Kelvin Wells will impose the sentence after a Spencer Hearing, which is required in all cases in which the death penalty is on the table. Neither the hearing nor the sentencing date was set Friday.

    Davis’ confidence that he could walk away from the killings might have stemmed from his successful destruction of a great deal of evidence. Given weeks to cover up his crimes, he cut out blood-stained dry wall at Hughes’ home, removed every stick of furniture from the home, tore out the seats of the Cadillac where he stored his victims’ bodies and, most significantly, coldly and efficiently disposed of Hughes’ and Rhodes’ corpses.

    What he didn’t count on was the dogged determination of investigators and prosecutors.

    In September 2012 the state failed to win a conviction in a case in which Davis was accused of stealing Hughes’ Corvette and selling it in Orlando for $15,000. Authorities had hoped that with a conviction in hand and Davis in prison, they could get his reluctant associates to come forward and tell them what they knew about his involvement in Hughes’ and Rhodes’ homicides. But Davis’ attorney successfully established the possibility that the missing Hughes could be alive, and perhaps had even orchestrated the car sale from behind the scenes.

    Walton County Sheriff Michael Adkinson said investigators doubled down on their efforts after the Corvette theft case to build a case for murder against Davis.

    “Literally the whole Walton County Sheriff’s Office worked on the case in one form or another,” prosecutor Bobby Elmore said Friday.

    “We felt that he would have been convicted. When he was not, we knew that he was a serious threat to someone’s health and well being,” Adkinson said. “It just worried me that he would kill someone else before we could put the murder case together fully. I just felt like we had to re-double our efforts.”

    Elmore got involved following Davis’ February, 2013, arrest for the murders. He said “this case has consumed my life” since then.

    “It’s been on my mind when I get up in the morning and when I lay down at night,” he said. “It required that.”

    Without bodies, Elmore said he was forced to prove an “absence of life” by providing the jury with evidence that Hughes and Rhodes simply had stopped doing things they did on a regular basis.

    ”It’s the most fact-intensive case I’ve ever had,” said Elmore, a prosecutor for 35 years.

    Elmore said after Friday’s recommendation that he was confident the jurors who convicted Davis “were well satisfied we had proven the deaths.”

    The families of Rhodes and Hughes praised the efforts of police and prosecutors.

    “The family of Hiedi Ann Rhodes would like to thank the Walton County Sheriff’s Department and Bobby Elmore for all the long hours and hard work they’ve put into the investigation and prosecution,” Rhodes’ sister, Sonja Rhodes, said in a statement. “Hiedi was a loving, forgiving, kind person who never met a stranger. She was taken away from us too soon and will be missed every day.”

    Adkinson said the successful conclusion to the Davis case “demonstrates the determination of the Walton County Sheriff’s Office to see justice done.”

    “We knew this would be difficult, but we were unwilling to let it go. It took over three years, but we were able to bring some level of closure to the family and protect the public from a ruthless killer,” he said.

    http://www.newsherald.com/news/crime....481991?page=0

  4. #14
    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2014
    Location
    FRANCE
    Posts
    3,073
    Man gets death penalty for killing couple during robbery

    DEFUNIAK SPRINGS, Fla. — A Florida Panhandle man has been sentenced to death for killing two people.

    A Walton County judge sentenced Barry Davis Jr. on Tuesday. He was convicted in May of first-degree murder and other charges.

    Authorities say Davis killed John Gregory Hughes and Hiedi Rhodes in May 2012 while robbing Hughes' Santa Rosa Beach home. The couple's bodies were never found. Davis' girlfriend testified that he cut up the bodies and

    burned the pieces after beating them and submerging their heads in a bathtub full of water.

    The Northwest Florida Daily News http://goo.gl/QrqvYA reports that prosecutors relied on bank account records, cellphone records and lack of contact with friends and family to argue the fact that the very social

    Hughes and Rhodes had not simply run off.

    http://www.wftv.com/news/ap/florida/...uring-r/nnRjs/

  5. #15
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    BARRY TRYNELL DAVIS, JR. v THE STATE OF FLORIDA

    In today's opinions, the Florida Supreme Court AFFIRMED Davis' convictions and sentences of death on direct appeal but VACATED his two death sentences and remanded for a new penalty phase pursuant to Hurst v State.
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

  6. #16
    Senior Member CnCP Legend JLR's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2011
    Posts
    2,740
    Florida murderer on death row re-sentenced to life in prison

    By WEAR staff

    PENSACOLA, Fla. -- A Florida man convicted of murder and previously sentenced to death has now been re-sentenced to life in prison.

    Bill Eddins, State Attorney for the First Judicial Circuit of Florida, announced Thursday that a Walton County Jury determined that life in prison without the possibility of parole is the appropriate sentence for Barry Trynell Davis, Jr.

    Davis was convicted of two counts of First Degree Murder in 2015 and sentenced to death.

    "However, at the time he was sentenced to death, the law did not require jurors to be unanimous in their decision regarding the appropriate sentence," the state attorney's office says. "Although they were unanimous in convicting him, they were not unanimous in what his sentence should be. Judge Kelvin Wells followed the jury’s majority recommendation and sentenced the Defendant to death."

    While Davis' case was on appeal, the law was changed and now requires that a verdict for death must be unanimous. The Florida Supreme Court upheld Davis' murder convictions, but his death sentence was vacated and a new trial for the purpose of determining the appropriate sentence was ordered.

    The murders took place on May 7, 2012, in Grayton Beach.

    The state attorney's office said the jury responsible for the re-sentencing heard testimony and arguments this week and reached their decision Thursday evening.

    After deliberating, the jury issued a verdict that life without the possibility of parole was the appropriate sentence.

    Circuit Judge Kelvin Wells immediately sentenced Davis to two consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole and ordered that he be sent back to the Department of Corrections, where he has been since 2015.

    https://weartv.com/news/local/florid...life-in-prison

Page 2 of 2 FirstFirst 12

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •