Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 9, 1995 TAG: 9507100107
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BOYDTON NOTE: BELOW LENGTH: Long
After spending more than four years in Mecklenburg Correctional Center, where condemned prisoners await execution, Mickey Wayne Davidson is still waiting - and becoming more impatient with each passing day.
Davidson wants his date with death.
"I just want the public to know that I am guilty, and that I feel I do deserve to die for what I did," said Davidson, who killed his wife and two teen-age stepdaughters with a crowbar at their Saltville home in 1990 as they were packing to leave him.
"I see no reason for them not to execute me," Davidson said in a recent interview. "I don't see how they have the right to keep me here against my wishes."
At a time when appeals by death-row inmates can last a decade or longer - prompting criticism by prosecutors and others who say prisoners are abusing the system - Davidson's case is unusual.
The 38-year-old Smyth County man is frustrated with a system he says is taking too long to kill him. After pleading guilty to capital murder and receiving the death sentence, Davidson has asked that his appeals be dropped.
Yet the five-year anniversary of the murders passed last month, and no execution has been scheduled.
"I'm interested in getting an execution date; that's the bottom line," Davidson said. Beads of sweat rolled down his face as he spoke by telephone through a glass window that divides the prison's visiting area, which is air-conditioned on the visitors' side but not on the inmates'.
"The way I see it," he said, "it's supposed to be the attorney general's office's responsibility to carry [the death sentence] out, so I don't see why they don't go ahead and set a date."
But if past events are an indication, Davidson's death wish could be fickle.
At least twice before, Davidson has asked that his appeals be dropped. Execution dates were set, and he was moved to within a few feet of the electric chair at Greensville Correctional Center before changing his mind and restarting his appeals.
Davidson's attorney, Tony Anderson of Roanoke, said that before a new execution date can be set, a mental evaluation should be conducted to ensure that Davidson is competent to make a life-or-death decision.
Anderson has filed a motion with the Virginia Supreme Court, asking that a psychiatrist be appointed to conduct an evaluation. Davidson doesn't believe that is necessary.
"I feel I'm competent to end my appeals," he said.
Anderson is not so sure.
"I would not bet a plugged nickel on whether or not Mickey would ever change his mind again," Anderson said. "He's gone back and forth so many times. We're not doctors, and we don't know what his mental state is."
The attorney general's office has yet to take a position on the request for a mental evaluation, but it has filed a motion asking the Supreme Court to dismiss Davidson's earlier appeal.
In the appeal, Davidson claimed that his trial lawyers made mistakes, including not exploring the effect alcohol abuse may have played in the crimes. More recently, in a handwritten affidavit to the attorney general, Davidson retracted those claims and asked that the appeal be dropped.
This time, he said, there will be no turning back.
The only reason he flip-flopped earlier, Davidson said, was because he gave in to people who begged him to restart his appeals. "I had people calling me, crying in my ear, begging me not to give up my life," he said.
Davidson said the calls came from friends as well as opponents of capital punishment, but he declined to elaborate.
Since Davidson received a stay from his most recently scheduled execution, Virginia has changed the way it conducts executions. Death row inmates now have a choice between electrocution and lethal injection.
Some have speculated that lethal injection, considered a more humane and painless method of execution, would encourage wavering inmates such as Davidson not to fight their death sentence.
Davidson said the change had no bearing on his decision.
"The way I see it, death is death," he said. "I've lived beside the electric chair two times. To me, that wasn't a factor."
Davidson said he will not make a request on his method of execution. When an inmate makes no request, the state chooses lethal injection.
Linwood Wells, the assistant attorney general who is handling Davidson's case, was unavailable for comment last week. Don Harrison, a spokesman for the office, declined to comment on Davidson's case in detail.
But in general, Harrison said, the attorney general's office is trying to shorten the appeals process for death row inmates. Legislation to that effect was presented by Attorney General Jim Gilmore and passed by the General Assembly at its last session.
The new law, which took effect July 1, places restrictions and time limits on several stages of a process that, on average, takes nine years to run its course, Harrison said.
"The general notion is that it will probably shave a couple of years off the process," he said.
With both his client and the attorney general's office saying essentially the same thing, Anderson has been put in a difficult position.
"Here we are trying to do what we think is legally correct in terms of the legal requirements and constitutional protections ... and we've got a client who's saying, 'Just kill me,''' Anderson said.
Despite his client's wishes, Anderson said the mental evaluation is a necessary step in the process - not just in Davidson's case, but in others that may follow.
"I think the public as a whole has an interest in whether or not we allow people who are not rational and not competent to make a decision like this," he said. "Regardless of whether Mickey is ultimately executed or not, it doesn't resolve the issue of what happens every time a death row inmate decides ... he wants to give up and face execution."
If a mental evaluation determines that Davidson is competent to drop his appeals, Anderson said, an execution could be scheduled by the end of the year.
The last thing Davidson wants is more court briefs, legal proceedings and delays. "To me, it's just a lot of suffering that's unnecessary, because I don't feel I have a chance," he said.
Davidson said he made up his mind to die shortly after June 13, 1990, when he killed his wife, Doris Davidson, 36, and his two stepdaughters, 14-year-old Mamie Clatterbuck and 13-year-old Tammy Clatterbuck.
Davidson admitted to authorities that he used a crowbar to bludgeon his family as they were preparing to leave the Saltville home to live with the girls' father in Northern Virginia.
Shortly before the killings, Davidson had quit his job as a gypsum miner; he also was drinking heavily. An eighth-grade dropout, he said he began drinking when he was 16 and was an alcoholic two years later.
Since he arrived on death row, Davidson has been meeting regularly with a prison ministry group. "I know there is a better home to go to," he said. "I do believe in God, and I think I have been forgiven for my sins."
Coping with the crimes "gets easier with each passing year," he said. "I guess it's like a boil that heals from the inside out."
Even if Davidson someday can live with himself for killing his family, he doesn't want to do it on death row.
"I would prefer to be put to death instead of spending the rest of my life behind bars," he said. "I don't think anybody wants to die. But there comes a time when you have to do what's best for you."
by CNB