CALIFORNIA SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS DEATH PENALTY FOR RICHARD ALLEN DAVIS

The California Supreme Court upheld the death penalty for Richard Allen Davis who was convicted of kidnapping and murdering Polly Klaas. Polly Klaas was the twelve year old girl who was kidnapped from her Petaluma house during a October 1, 1993 slumber party while her mother and kid sister were sleeping in a nearby bedroom.

Polly invited two friends to the party. The three girls were in Polly’s room with the door shut. At one point Polly opened the door to her room to get the sleeping bag of one of her guests. She saw Davis with a knife in his hand. He entered the bedroom and tied up the three girls. He took Polly and told the other two girls to count to a thousand before doing anything. They removed the ties and woke up Polly’s mother who called the police.

Shannon Lynch was driving on a road leading from the residence of Dana Jaffe approximately a half hours after the kidnapping. She had been babysitting for Jaffe’s children. As she approached Pythian Road she saw Davis. His car was stuck in a ditch. She got scared and called Jaffe from the nearest pay phone. Jaffe called the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department. They sent two deputies out who helped get Davis’s vehicle out of the ditch and escorted him off the property. The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department radio system was not connected to the Petaluma Police Department’s radio system and the deputies did not know about the kidnapping. Later that evening Davis returned to Jaffe’s property and retrieved Polly.

At least four people saw Davis that evening near the Klaas residence.

The kidnapping attracted considerable attention. Seventy-five FBI agents and 50 police officers immediately started searching for Polly and the nationwide press carried major articles. Thousands of leads poured into the police and FBI offices. Nearly two months later on November 28 Jaffe found several items associated with Polly near the spot where Davis had run into the ditch. She called the Sheriff’s Department and Davis was arrested at his sister’s residence on a parole violation on November 30.

Later that day, Petaluma police officer Larry Pelton and FBI agent Larry Taylor Mirandized and interrogated Davis but he denied everything. At one point during the interview Davis requested a lawyer but the Supreme Court found the request to be too ambiguous to terminate the interrogation under Miranda. But before the interview was over Davis clearly asserted his right to have an attorney present. On December 2 criminalists identified a palm print in Polly’s room as belonging to Davis. On the fourth Petaluma Police Sargeant Michael Meese again interrogated Davis at the jail and urged him to call Meese if there was any chance of finding Polly alive. Later, Davis called Meese and confessed. He then led the officers to Polly’s body. The Supreme Court decision in Edwards v. Arizona mandated that once a defendant asserted his Miranda rights police could not further interview the inmate until he/she was provided an attorney.

But the California courts have developed an exception to the Miranda rule called called the Rescue Exception. When a person has been kidnapped and urgency requires immediate knowledge in order to save the person’s life, peace officers can violate the Miranda rule if the following conditions exist: 1) urgency of need with no other course of action promising relief; 2) the possibility of saving a person’s life mandates the action; and 3) objective facts known to the police officers require such action. Even though 64 days passed between the time of the kidnapping and Sargeant Meese’s jailhouse interview, the court found that since it was possible that Polly was still living the Rescue Exception was applicable and the conversation was admissible at trial.

The Supreme Court found no reasons to reverse the convictions and it stated that if any errors were committed they were harmless in that there was enough evidence when excluding the wrongly admitted evidence to convict Davis.

It was the murder of Polly Klaas and the crusading efforts of her father, Marc Klaas that led to the passage of Three Strike laws throughout the country. Prior to Polly’s murder, Davis had been convicted of burglary and forging a ten dollar bill when he was twelve years old. He had convictions for assault, robbery, and kidnapping in addition to the juvenile burglary. He also had a record of committing sex offenses against. Yet despite his record and despite the fact that he had spent much of his life in prison he was paroled at the time of Polly’s murder. California and other states enacted Three Strikes Law in order to prevent other people with similar records from killing other people like Polly. While the laws have numerous flaws they have kept many habitual felons off the streets.