Eddie Davis was executed by the State of Florida for the murder of 11-year-old Kimberly Ann Waters
According to court documents Eddie Davis would go to the home of a woman he had briefly dated and would sexually assault and murder 11-year-old Kimberly Ann Waters
Eddie Davis would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Eddie Davis would be executed on July 10 2014 by lethal injection
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When Was Eddie Davis Executed
Eddie Davis was executed on July 10 2014
Eddie Davis Case
Twenty years, four months and six days after Eddie Wayne Davis kidnapped, raped and suffocated 11-year-old Kimberly Ann Waters in Lakeland, he died in the state’s execution chamber Thursday at Florida State Prison.
It took the state 11 minutes to take his life.
He murmured prayers as the state’s execution team prepared to execute him, his eyes darting around the chamber. Leather straps secured him to the table, with his left arm outstretched for the lethal injection.
Davis, 45, had no last words.
As the lethal drugs flowed into his vein, Crystal Waters joined friends in a vigil for her younger sister at her Lakeland gravesite.
“I’m relieved it’s over,” she said later Thursday evening. “I just hope now we can remember Kimberly and her life, not her death.”
Prison officials were notified at 5:45 p.m. Thursday that the U.S. Supreme Court had denied Davis’ last appeal.
Despite the last-minute efforts by his lawyers to halt the execution for fear a possible blood disorder combined with the injected drugs would cause Davis extreme pain, he showed no signs of discomfort. Two minutes after beginning the lethal injection, the unidentified execution leader leaned into Davis, appearing to check for consciousness. A minute later, Davis’ mouth fell open slightly and he began breathing heavily.
Four minutes after the process began, Davis’ breathing grew shallow and he became very still.
At 6:43 p.m., 11 minutes after the lethal injection began and after a physician’s examination, the execution leader announced that the sentence against Davis had been carried out.
Behind a glass window, Polk Sheriff Grady Judd and Assistant State Attorney John Aguero, who prosecuted Davis in 1995, sat among the 23 witnesses who watched as the state took Davis’ life.
“When I saw his breathing starting to get labored,” Aguero said, “all I could think about was Kimberly.
“That poor child had to be terrified,” he said, recalling how she was suffocated, “and here he was, unconscious, and didn’t know he was dying.”
Davis, who had dated Kimberly’s mother, kidnapped the girl from her Lakeland home March 4, 1994, while her mother, a nurse, was working the night shift and her old sister, Crystal, slept in a nearby room. He brutally raped her at a vacant mobile home and forced her to walk to the nearby Moose Lodge in Lakeland. She fought him when he suffocated her with a piece of plastic bag. He threw her body in a trash bin and Polk sheriff’s deputies found her the next night. Davis confessed three times, and detectives found her blood on his boot, according to court records
Twelve jurors deliberated 32 minutes before finding him guilty, and they unanimously recommended he should die for his crimes. Circuit Judge Daniel True Andrews upheld that recommendation. His family has declined to comment on his case.
Thomas Brimer, Kimberly’s uncle, was among her four relatives who watched her killer die Thursday. Her mother, Beverly, died 10 years ago in a motorcycle accident.
“It’s finally over,” Brimer said. “We finally have justice.”
Kimberly’s grandmother, Mary Hobbs, traveled to Starke from her Brooksville home but didn’t attend the execution.
“I don’t need to see it done, I just need to know it’s done,” she said. “For the first time in 20 years, I’m OK.”
Earlier in the day, Davis spent time with his mother and a Catholic spiritual adviser before eating his last meal of chopped steak with onion gravy, home fries, corn, Brussels sprouts, cherry ice cream and a Dr Pepper.
“His demeanor is calm,” Jessica Cary, spokeswoman for the state Department of Corrections, said at that time. “He’s not agitated.”
When the execution was over, Judd said it was anything but a joyous occasion, but it was something that had to happen.
“He earned it, he deserved it and today, justice was done,” he said.
At Davis’ trial, his lawyers argued that his troubled upbringing, including physical and sexual abuse and alcoholism, led to the killing.
In a prepared statement, Public Defender Rex Dimmig, representing Polk, Highlands and Hardee counties, said the state’s lack of assistance for troubled youth was as much to blame for Kimberly’s death as Davis was.
“Florida’s simplistic practice of ignoring, incapacitating and ultimately exterminating the troubled youth of our state has failed to protect our most vulnerable citizens,” he said. “Without more, the cycle of neglect, abuse and violence will continue. There will be more Eddie Wayne Davises and regrettably, more Kimberly Waterses.”
https://www.theledger.com/story/news/2014/07/10/eddie-wayne-davis-executed-for/8183059007/
