Jury Recommends Death Penalty for Polly Klaas’ Killer

A jury recommended Monday that Richard Allen Davis be put to death for the kidnapping and murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas, a crime that horrified the nation and invigorated an anti-crime movement in California.

“Yes!” exclaimed a visibly relieved Marc Klaas, Polly’s father, as a court clerk read the verdict from the same jury that had convicted Davis in June of murdering Polly.

A few Klaas family supporters gasped, then clapped their hands. Marc Klaas was immediately embraced by family members, friends and Michael Meese, the Petaluma police officer who led the investigation after Polly was abducted during a slumber party at her home in October 1993.

Across the aisle of the packed courtroom, Darlene Schwarm, Davis’ sister, and defense attorney Lorena Chandler wept quietly. Davis, clad in a black shirt and gray pants, sat impassively facing the judge, but then flashed a warm smile at Schwarm’s four children as sheriff’s deputies led him from the courtroom.

Judge Thomas C. Hastings, who will formally sentence Davis, 42, on Sept. 26, thanked jurors “on behalf of the people of Sonoma and Santa Clara counties” for their “personal sacrifices” during the 3 1/2-month trial.

Outside the courtroom, jury foreman Brian Bianco, a San Jose accountant, described the 21 hours of deliberations during the penalty phase of the trial as sometimes emotional and acknowledged that there were times when he questioned whether the jury could reach a decision.

“When you have something as serious as somebody’s life, you have to really give it a lot of thought,” he said.

Once jurors had found Davis guilty of kidnapping and murder, their only options were to recommend death for him or life in prison without possibility of parole.

“We tried to come up with the other decision,” Bianco said, but jurors simply could not build a case for life in prison.

From the night that Polly was kidnapped from her Petaluma home as her mother, Eve Nichols, slept nearby, the case attracted enormous attention. Pictures of the young girl’s smiling face were put in storefront windows and on telephone poles throughout Northern California and spread through the rest of the nation via the Internet--the first such use of that medium. Police and an army of volunteers searched for her for two months, and an MTV video was produced appealing for information.

After the all-out manhunt, Davis was taken into custody and confessed. He led police to Polly’s body Dec. 4, 1993.

In a tragic twist, Davis told police that Polly had been alive in nearby woods when Sonoma County sheriff’s deputies helped free his car from a ditch on a rural road 27 miles from Petaluma. The deputies, apparently unaware of the abduction 90 minutes earlier, sent Davis on his way. Davis said he returned to collect Polly and later strangled her--a contention that prosecutors later disputed.

When it was learned that Davis was a parolee with a long criminal record--including previous assaults on women--the case became a symbol of what many activists viewed as a justice system gone awry.

Gov. Pete Wilson and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) spoke at Polly’s memorial service and Joan Baez and Linda Ronstadt sang. President Clinton sent a message to her parents.

Within days, angry activists and state officials turned their attention to passage of California’s three-strikes law, which requires that people convicted of three serious felonies serve a minimum of 25 years in prison.

Jury foreman Bianco said it was Davis’ videotaped confession and his apparent lack of remorse for the crime that weighed most heavily in the jury’s ultimate decision.

Jurors, he said, voted six times on the possible penalty, and each time the vote changed. “Up until we took our final vote today, I thought there was a decent chance we could have had a hung jury,” Bianco said.

On Monday morning, those jurors still undecided said they needed “quiet time” to review the judge’s instructions, Bianco said. But by early afternoon, they were ready to cast their final vote.

“For most anybody, it would be difficult” to reach such a decision, Bianco said. “We all have families that we have to explain this to . . . church that we have to deal with. . . . I don’t think I feel good or bad. It was the proper decision.”

As Bianco spoke, other jurors, who decided not to talk to the news media, were escorted to their cars by sheriff’s deputies.

Outside the courtroom, prosecutor Greg Jacobs, who earlier in the day had expressed fear that the jury might be deadlocked, said he was “greatly relieved” by the decision.

“There was just too much pointing toward the death penalty for that particular jury to reverse itself” once it had found Davis guilty of murder as well as special-circumstance charges of robbery, kidnapping, burglary and attempting a lewd act on a child.

Still, Jacobs said he spent much of last week poring over jurors’ biographies, trying to guess who might not be willing to impose the death penalty.

“That’s the nature of prosecutors,” he said. “Always second-guessing, always doing post-mortems.”

Clutching a poster-sized photograph of a smiling Polly taken when she was 10, Marc Klaas told reporters that even though he and his family were “very glad that Davis received the penalty he deserved,” the verdict “unfortunately, doesn’t change anything in our lives.”

Klaas, who sat through the trial with his parents and his second wife, Violet, and who testified in the penalty phase, said the family will continue its work on behalf of children through the foundation he established after Polly’s death.

The grim-faced Chandler, a Davis defense attorney who specializes in death penalty cases, paused only briefly to speak with reporters as she and lead defense attorney Barry Collins left the courtroom.

“I’m afraid it demonstrates that we have become a more vengeful, less compassionate society,” said Chandler, who had asked jurors to spare Davis’ life because he had been irreparably damaged during his childhood by cold, unloving parents. She presented evidence of Davis being abused, then abandoned by his mother, and abused by his father, a longshoreman who often left his son in the care of baby sitters for weeks at a time.

Chandler called prison authorities, psychologists and former baby sitters to the stand to speak of Davis’ troubled youth and his many years in prison for crimes ranging from armed assault to robbery. One psychologist testified that Davis suffers from three personality disorders.

Chandler tried to persuade jurors that life in prison for Davis was a severe enough punishment. “There’s just been enough pain and enough death and having more doesn’t solve anything,” Chandler said.

She pleaded with jurors that they might “imitate God” by exercising mercy in deciding Davis’ fate.

But instead, the jury apparently heeded prosecutor Jacob’s admonition not to forget Polly.

“You should not reward him for the coldblooded killing of a witness and a victim to his own crime,” Jacobs told jurors.

In his confession, Davis said he killed Polly because he feared returning to prison if she identified him.

During the trial, Jacobs alleged that Davis had stalked Polly and snatched her from her home because he was a sexual sadist with a history of brutally assaulting women. Although no physical evidence of sexual assault was found on Polly’s badly decomposed body, jurors found Davis guilty of attempting to commit a lewd act on her.

When he formally sentences Davis next month, Hastings has the option of reducing the death sentence to life in prison without possibility of parole. With rare exceptions, however, the recommendations of a jury are followed.

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An Infamous Crime

The October 1993 kidnapping of Polly Klaas from a slumber party in her small-town home not only outraged a nation but also sparked the first widespread use of home computer networks and other electronic media to find a crime victim. Ultimately, the news that her killer was a repeat felon on parole energized an anti-crime movement and prompted California voters to overwhelmingly approve the unprecedented three-strikes law.

USE OF INTERNET

* Late October 1993: A massive search is mounted by Polly’s parents and her Petaluma community, including extensive use of the Internet, computer bulletin boards and media such as an MTV rock video.

THREE STRIKES

* November-December 1993: Suspect Richard Allen Davis is arrested Nov. 30 on an Indian reservation in Mendocino County. He confesses in early December and leads police to Polly’s body. Within days, state Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren backs an initiative that becomes Proposition 184, the three-strikes law approved by voters in November 1994. The law requires that criminals convicted of a third felony spend at least 25 years in prison.

* June 1, 1994: Davis is formally charged with kidnapping and murder.

PUBLIC AWARENESS

* September 1994: Marc Klaas, Polly’s father, forms an anti-crime group to raise public awareness of crimes against children.

* July 1995: Jury selection begins in Petaluma; a motion is made to relocate the trial.

THE TRIAL

* November 1995: The case is moved from Santa Rosa to San Jose for trial.

* April 1996: Opening arguments begin.

* May 1996: The prosecution’s case includes an emotional tape of a 911 call Polly’s mother made to police upon discovering her daughter missing.

* June 11, 1996: Murder phase of the case goes to the jury.

* June 18, 1996: Davis is convicted of murder, plus special circumstance counts of kidnapping, robbery, burglary and attempting a lewd act on a child.

* July 1, 1996: Penalty phase of trial begins.

THE SENTENCE

* Aug. 5, 1996: Jury says Davis should be executed for the crime.

Researched by TRACY THOMAS / Los Angeles Times