Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, October 20, 1995 TAG: 9510200034
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER AND LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: JARRATT LENGTH: Long
The execution of the 38-year-old Smyth County man was delayed for nearly 30 minutes while the U.S. Supreme Court considered a request by Davidson's cousin for a stay of execution.
Davidson himself changed his mind twice about pursuing his appeals but said several months ago that he wanted them dropped once and for all. He was apparently unaware of the efforts being made Thursday to restart them.
"I'll say my last words to the Lord, " he said just before execution by lethal injection. "I guess that's really all that needs to be said."
Davidson walked by himself to the stretcherlike place of execution, dwarfed by eight uniformed corrections officials who strapped him onto the gurney. His expression appeared pensive and sad.
Although Davidson had changed his mind several times about wanting to die - stopping and then restarting his appeals - he said Thursday morning that he was ready to be executed.
"I'm actually looking forward to the chance of ending it and getting it all over with," he said in a telephone interview from his death house cell at Greensville Correctional Center.
Davidson never contested his guilt and said he deserved to die.
"I pray every day and every night that God will forgive me for my sins, and I think that he will," Davidson said. "I guess I've accepted it the best that I can, although it's still very painful and I'm ashamed of what I did.
"As for the victims, I do love them, I miss them very much, and I am looking forward to meeting them in heaven."
Davidson said he spoke with an attorney Thursday morning from the Virginia Capital Representation Resource Center, who filed a last-minute request for a stay, arguing that Davidson was not mentally competent to end his appeals.
Davidson said the motion was filed against his wishes and that he was hoping it would be unsuccessful.
Explaining that he preferred to die rather than be incarcerated for the rest of his life, Davidson said he was mentally competent to make that decision. "I feel it's a decision I had to make for myself, and I'm happy with it," he said.
"I know that I will never be free."
Thursday afternoon, a federal judge denied the request to postpone the execution. Barry Davidson, his second cousin, had submitted a ``next friend'' petition claiming the inmate was mentally incompetent to waive appeals. U.S. District Judge James Spencer in Richmond denied the motion at about 1:30.
Barry Davidson wrote in the petition to Spencer he felt an obligation to his cousin. ``I could not live with myself if Mickey died because of some illness which we did not try to fix.''
Davidson said in the interview that his immediate family members had agreed not to intervene in the case, at his request. "As for my family, I know they don't want me to die, which is understandable. But on the other hand, they respect my decision, and I'm grateful to them for that."
Spencer criticized the request for the stay because it came two months after a psychologist hired by defense interests evaluated Mickey Davidson and concluded he was mentally ill.
``This circumstance is one that did not call for brinksmanship,'' the judge told the defense lawyer. ``You waited until the last minute, and I am going to decide based on the information I have at the last minute.''
Spencer said the findings of the August mental evaluation were contrary to those of several psychologists who evaluated Davidson for the state.
Davidson, a construction worker, pleaded guilty in 1991 to capital murder in the beating deaths of his wife, Doris, 36, and two teen-age stepdaughters, Tammy Lynn Clatterbuck, 13, and Mamie Darnell Clatterbuck, 14, at their home in Saltville on June 13, 1990.
He said he killed them because his wife was packing to leave with the girls and return to her first husband.
Despite Davidson's wavering over the years about whether he wanted to appeal his death penalty, his execution date came relatively quickly after his conviction.
The Virginia Supreme Court, which automatically reviews death penalty cases, had unanimously upheld Davidson's sentence in June 1992. "Davidson's methodical use of a crowbar to beat his victims to death in such a savage and brutal fashion exemplifies his depravity of mind," Justice Leroy R. Hassell wrote in the opinion.
Davidson was sentenced to die in the electric chair on Feb. 3, 1993, 19 months after his conviction. That would have been the swiftest execution since Virginia resumed the death penalty in 1982.
Davidson had decided against seeking a delay. Four days before he was to die, however, he telephoned his court-appointed attorney and said he had changed his mind.
The state Supreme Court granted the stay just 71/2 hours before he would have been electrocuted, referring the case back to Smyth County Circuit Court.
Davidson's attorney, Tony Anderson of Roanoke, sought the delay because he had been appointed less than two weeks before. The state argued that a favorable ruling on the request would set a precedent of allowing death row inmates automatic delays of executions by invoking their appeals at the last minute.
Anderson had sought a new trial on the basis that the original defense made mistakes, including a failure to investigate the role that Davidson's alcoholism might have played in the murders.
Davidson, who dropped out of school in the eighth grade, started drinking at age 16 and became an alcoholic within two years. He had quit his job as a gypsum miner and was drinking heavily shortly before the murders.
Before the issue was resolved, Davidson changed his mind again in August 1993, saying he wanted to withdraw his request.
By then, he had been telephoning Anderson five or six times a day with a different position each time. Anderson asked for a Supreme Court ruling that Davidson was not competent to decide to end his appeals. The court declined last August, without comment.
Davidson purchased a burial plot in a Saltville cemetery for himself, next to where his victims are buried.
The Associated Press provided some information for this story.
by CNB