Triple-Slaying Suspect Enters Not Guilty Plea

Frederick Martin Davidson, shackled and downcast, pleaded not guilty Monday to three counts of murder in the fatal shootings Thursday of three engineering professors at San Diego State University.

Deputy Dist. Atty. James Pippin announced that the district attorney’s office will ask the jury to find that “special circumstances”--lying in wait and committing multiple murders--exist to merit the death penalty.

Pippin said Davidson admitted to police that he shot and killed professors Chen Liang, D. Preston Lowery III and Constantinos Lyrintzis just as a session devoted to his rebuttal of their earlier criticisms of his master’s thesis was beginning. Police say Davidson used a gun he had hidden in a first-aid kit in the laboratory where the meeting was to take place.

Defense attorney Kate Coyne said Davidson, 36, remains emotionally distraught over the killings and suffers from mental problems that were not recognized by his family.

“He’s very sad, very remorseful and very bewildered,” she said. “He’s genuinely deeply disturbed.”

Davidson is being held, without bail, on a suicide watch at the County Jail. His mother and sister attended the brief arraignment but would not speak to reporters.

Coyne said she hopes that prosecutors will look at Davidson’s life history and drop the bid for the death penalty and instead seek life in prison without the possibility of parole. She said she has not ruled out a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity.

“Anyone who has attended graduate school knows the stress involved in a thesis defense is enormous,” Coyne said, “and when an individual has frailties, that can only exacerbate them.”

Coyne, who did not dispute police claims of a confession, said it was Davidson who called 911 after the shootings. Campus police found Davidson in the hallway outside the laboratory, sobbing, carrying a suicide note, and begging police to kill him.

Davidson spared the lives of three fellow students who were attending the rebuttal session. If he had been unable to overcome the criticism of his thesis, he would have been denied the degree he had worked two years to obtain.

Police say Davidson believed that the professors were planning to unfairly deny him the degree. Liang was Davidson’s thesis advisor and had just concluded a brief opening statement when Davidson, without saying a word, walked to the first-aid kit and got the gun.

Municipal Judge Albert Harutunian set Dec. 5 for a preliminary hearing.

Times correspondent Paul Levikow contributed to this story.