Polly Klaas' killer seeks to have CA death sentence overturned

The man found responsible for one of the nation's most infamous killings is seeking to avoid his sentence of capital punishment.

Sentenced to death for the kidnapping and murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas, Richard Allen Davis hopes to make use of a new California law in order to get a new lease on life, as the New York Post reports.

The case of Polly Klaas was one that gripped the nation back in the 1990s, and the victim's father, Marc Klaas recently issued a statement reminding the country of Davis' horrible crimes, as Fox News notes.

“On Aug. 5, 1996, Richard Allen Davis was sentenced to death for kidnapping and murdering my 12-year-old daughter Polly Klaas, with the intent to commit lewd acts upon her,” he began.

Marc Klaas continued, “At 10:30 p.m., on Oct. 1, 1993, Davis invaded a slumber party at the home Polly shared with her mother in Petaluma, California, where he bound, tied, and blindfolded Polly's two friends before kidnapping her at knifepoint.”

It was two months later that Klaas' loved ones were informed that Davis had “murdered Polly and discarded her body on top of a trash pile within hours of abducting her.”

Davis is currently pursuing a recall of his death sentence due to Gov. Gavin Newsom's 2019 moratorium on capital punishment, which provided that nobody in the state can be executed while he remains in office.

Despite having received a sentence involving the ultimate punishment, Davis is now citing a California law that went into effect in 2022 as a means to escape the death penalty, in that it works to invalidate certain sentencing enhancements for some types of convictions.

Lawyers for Davis are contending that the law should be applied in his case, while a prosecutor in Sonoma County believes that the parameters of the law were never intended to work in such a way as to grant the killer a new penalty phase of his original trial.

Unsurprisingly, Davis' efforts have not been well-received by the Klaas family, who had been under the impression that justice would be served in Polly's name.

“We had every expectation that the sentence of death recommended by the jury and imposed by Judge Thomas Hastings would keep him segregated from society for the rest of his life,” Marc Klaas' statement declared. “We could not have been more wrong!”

“The Sonoma County District Attorney's opposition to recall of Davis's capital sentence...is correct that a recall of a capital sentence is not authorized under the section, and the court should deny his motion on April 5, 2024,” the grieving father concluded.

Pointing to the potential long-term fallout if Davis' wish is granted, Marc Klaas warned, “If my family can be subjected to the possible recall of capital sentence of a condemned murderer who, prior to murdering Polly, had multiple convictions for violence towards women and was diagnosed as a sexually sadistic psychopath, then any victim's family who thought that justice was served in the courtroom is in for a shocking new reality.”

“If Polly's killer is somehow able to prevail, this is the tip of the iceberg, he added, and now the country awaits a ruling from Superior Court Judge Benjamin Williams, who has set May 31 as the date on which a decision on Davis' ruling will be made.