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Convicted killer seeks to avoid death penalty

Twice-convicted killer gets new hearing this week

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By Lauren Pack, Staff Writer Updated 8:48 PM Sunday, May 10, 2009

HAMILTON — Twice-convicted killer Von Clark Davis, who was sentenced to die in 1984, is expected to be back in court this week for a third chance to avoid the death penalty.

The daughter of his second victim — now a 34-year-old woman — will also be in attendance for Davis’ third mitigation trial before a panel of three Butler County Common Pleas judges.

“I will be there every day,” said Mason resident Fonsea Butler, who was 7 when her mother, Suzette Butler, was shot in the head four times by Davis, her former boyfriend. Evidence presented at trial showed Davis planned the fatal shooting and lured the 24-year-old single mother to the steps outside the American Legion Hall on Central Avenue in Hamilton and killed her just two weeks before Christmas 1983. At the time he was on parole for the 1970 murder of his wife, Ernestine, 20, at her Hamilton home.

“I am a Christian and I am not bitter. I will not allow him (Davis) to have that type of power over my life,” Butler said. “But I don’t want this to happen to another family. He brutally murdered two women; in my opinion he shouldn’t get another chance.”

Following a trial before a three judge panel in May 1984, Davis was given the death penalty. Four years later, his sentence was overturned by the Ohio Supreme Court, which ruled the trial court should not have considered as aggravating factors the manner in which Davis obtained the gun and ammunition used in the crime.

In 1988, the three-judge panel again sentenced Davis to death. In January 2007, a federal court overturned Davis’ sentence based on the claim that the trial court failed to admit and consider relevant mitigating evidence during the 1988 resentencing.

Today, at age 62, Davis is getting his “third bite at the apple,” said Butler County Prosecutor Robin Piper. The outcome of the three-day mitigation hearing before Judges Andrew Nastoff, Charles Pater and Keith Spaeth, is very important because the law from 1984, the year Davis was convicted, applies.

“There was no life without parole then,” Piper said.

The judges will have a choice of sentencing Davis to death, 20 years to life or 30 years to life. Davis has already spent 25 years in prison and could go before the parole board if given the first option.

“The one way to know women will be safe from this man who has killed twice is for him to have a death sentence,” Piper said.

Contact this reporter at (513) 820-2168 or lpack@coxohio.com.

Von Clark Davis

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