Nearly three decades after receiving a death sentence for kidnapping and murdering Polly Klaas, California child killer Richard Allen Davis is pushing for the sentence to be overturned, following a recent criminal justice reform law.
According to prosecutors, Davis based appeal on Senate Bill 483, signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2021 and effective as of 2022. The law nullifies sentencing enhancements for prior convictions related to certain nonviolent felonies and drug offenses.
“It was a stab in the heart, Nancy,” Polly’s father and the Founder of the Klaas Foundation, Mark Klaas, told Nancy Grace during Thursday’s “Crime Stories” episode.
“What it did is it pulled everything right back up to the forefront. It brought the crime back to the forefront, the trial. You know I think about Polly all the time. I think about Polly every day but once this guy got on the death row I put him out of my mind and… and there have been very few reasons for me to think about him or to consider him at all over the course of the last 30 years.”
As CrimeOnline previously reported, Davis snatched Polly from a slumber party at her family home in Petaluma, California, in 1993. After sneaking into the residence, he abducted her by knifepoint and then strangled her before dumping her body around 50 miles away.
Davis was released from prison for kidnapping a woman just months before the murder. Public outrage over his lengthy criminal record prompted California to enact stricter sentencing laws for repeat offenders.
“In ’76, [he] escapes from the Napa State Hospital, goes on a four-day crime spree, breaks into the home of Marjorie Mitchell, a nurse at the state hospital, beats her in the head with a fire poker while she slept, stole a shotgun from an animal shelter, then kidnapped her Hazel Frost, climbs into her Cadillac outside a bar,” Grace said.
“I mean, it goes on and on. He gets 20 for kidnapping, 25 years. He gets out and keeps doing the same thing, robbing a yogurt shop, robbing a bank, confesses to crime, more kidnappings.”
However, in response to a burgeoning prison population, the state has since moved to stop sentencing enhancements for prior convictions. Davis claims that the changes should allow resentencing in his case, which could potentially remove him from death row.
“I’d love to choke the life out of him,” Klass continued. “I’d love to treat him the same way he treated my daughter. You know, he deserves nothing more and nothing less.”
In a court filing submitted in February, Davis’s attorneys contended that the law implemented in 2022 nullifies the sentencing enhancements associated with Davis’ four previous felony convictions and three previous prison sentences.
“People pass these laws focused, especially in the last 10 years in California, on these supposed progressive agendas. I don’t see anything progressive about these legislations, but the focus is on the criminals,” President of DordulianLaw Group, Samuel Dordulian, said.
“Never once do these legislators think about what will be the impact on the victims will be the impact on the survivors and the victims of these families? That’s never in consideration.”
Prosecutors argued that the law does not pertain to his death sentence for Polly’s murder. Instead, they asserted that it should only impact approximately two years of his prison term related to his other charges.
Davis is currently on death row at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center in San Quentin.
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