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GREEN COVE SPRINGS – The State and defense attorneys agree Donald Davidson should die in prison. It soon will be up to 4th Judicial Circuit Judge Don H. Lester whether that happens naturally or by lethal injection.
Lester heard from a final defense witness Monday afternoon before Asst. State Attorney L.E. Hutton chronicled the horrific details of a Dec. 1, 2014, afternoon when Davidson, now 37, entered 35-year-old Roseann Welsh’s home on Mayflower Street to rape her. He strangled her with his hands and a shoelace before stabbing her with a buck knife.
He left the mother’s lifeless body in the master bedroom shower before moving onto her 10-year-old daughter, who had just got home from school and was in the kitchen doing homework. He then spent several hours raping and abusing the little girl.
“She forever lost her innocence as a child, as a human being,” Hutton said as his voice cracked with emotion.
Davidson’s victims, including molested girls in 2004 and a pregnant woman, all were small in stature. The pregnant woman weighed less than 110 pounds. Welsh was 5-foot-1, 90 pounds when she was killed; her daughter weighed 54 pounds.
Davidson was 6-3, 250 and ordered to wear GPS while on release for attacking the pregnant woman. Prosecutors reminded the judge Monday how the GPS tracked him to Welsh’s home the day before the murder so show he likely was planning his crime. He cut the GPS monitor off his leg before he attacked Welsh.
“This defendant is not worthy of this court’s mercy,” Hutton said.
Public defender Mark Wright didn’t dispute the disturbing details of the crime. In fact, he suggested Welsh’s suffering may have been limited because of Davidson’s ability to overpower her and render her unconscious.
He also said Davidson’s actions may have been affected by a lifetime of emotional and physical abuse from family members, limited social and intellectual development and an unsettled homelife that often-included living among rats, trash and two uncles who were convicted sexual predators.
“How can that not spawn anxiety and depression,” Wright asked.
Davidson pleaded guilty to spare a jury and families to relive the gruesome details of the murder.
“I want to spare the victims from coming to trials,” he said in May as Lester considered his guilty plea.
Lester then heard three days of testimony during the sentencing phase and he will make the final decision.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys must turn in their sentencing requests by Aug. 9, and both sides will return to court three days later to wrap up final details.
Lester is expected to render his decision by late August.