Judge to consider recalling death sentence of man who killed 12-year-old Polly Klaas

SAN JOSE, California — A California judge will consider Friday whether to revoke the death sentence against Richard Allen Davis, who killed 12-year-old Polly Klaas in 1993 after kidnapping her at knifepoint from her bedroom in a crime that shocked the nation.

Jurors in 1996 found Davis guilty of first-degree murder and the “special circumstances” of kidnapping, burglary, robbery and attempted lewd acts with a child. Davis, who had an extensive kidnapping and assault record dating back to the 1970s, was sentenced to death.

Davis’ attorneys argued in a February lawsuit that his death sentence should be overturned because of recent changes in California’s sentencing laws. They also noted California’s current moratorium on the death penalty. In 2019, California Governor Gavin Newsom placed a moratorium on executions, calling the death penalty “a failure that has discriminated against defendants who are mentally ill, black and brown, or who cannot afford expensive legal representation.” A future governor could change that policy.

The Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office said the arguments made by Davis’ attorneys are “nonsensical” and that the laws they cite do not apply to Davis’ death sentence for Klaas’ murder.

Davis kidnapped Klaas from her bedroom in Petaluma, 40 miles north of San Francisco, in October 1993 and strangled her to death. That night, she and two friends had a slumber party and her mother slept in a nearby room. Klaas’s disappearance prompted a national search by thousands of volunteers. Davis was arrested two months later and led police to the child’s body, which was found in a shallow grave 50 miles north of her home in Sonoma County.

The case was a major driving force behind California’s passage of a so-called “three strikes” law in 1994, which imposed longer sentences for repeat offenders. Lawmakers and voters approved the proposal.

California has not executed anyone since 2006, when Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor. And while voters narrowly approved a ballot measure in 2016 to speed up sentencing, not a single convicted inmate faced imminent execution.

Since the last execution in California, the death row population in the United States has grown to one in four convicted prisoners.