Jury Supports Execution Of Child’s Killer Kidnap-Murder Of Polly Klaas Shocked Nation

A jury Monday recommended the death penalty for the man who kidnapped 12-year-old Polly Klaas from a slumber party at her Northern California home and murdered her nearly three years ago.

The 42-year-old killer, Richard Allen Davis, appeared to smirk as the unanimous verdict was read.

The decision by the six women and six men who made up the jury is not formally binding on the judge in the case, Thomas Hastings. It is virtually unheard-of, however, for a judge in California to overrule a jury that calls for a defendant’s execution.

The young girl’s grandfather, Joe Klaas, said the verdict marked the end for his family of “a 34-month, agonizing journey toward hell.” Davis, he added, “can go the rest of the way alone.”

The crime had shocked people around the country.

For weeks, it turned the young victim’s hometown of Petaluma into the staging area for a massive search that drew support from movie stars and politicians.

The capture of Davis only added to parents’ fears that the judicial system did not adequately protect their children. He had spent most of his adult life in prison for a series of increasingly violent crimes and was on parole at the time of the killing after serving half of a 16-year sentence for another kidnapping.

The case also gave strong impetus to California’s “three strikes” law, one of the toughest of a growing number of state sentencing laws that require extended mandatory prison terms for repeat felony offenders.

“Because of this case, a lot has changed in several laws,” the lead prosecutor, Greg Jacobs, said after the verdict. But he suggested that the principal lesson went beyond the judicial system: “the idea that we have to watch our children and watch them very carefully and never let our guard down.”

The Klaas family never thought it had let its guard down.

When Davis sneaked into the family’s home shortly before 11 p.m. on the night of Oct. 1, 1993, brandished a knife and snatched Polly as she played a board game with two other young girls, her mother, Eve Nichol, and her half-sister were sleeping just down the hall.