User:Occurring/sandbox/Larry Davis article draft

Larry Davis or, since 1989, Adam Abdul-Hakeem (May 28, 1966 – February 20, 2008) was an American man who in 1986 shot six police officers, claimed self-defense, and in 1988 was acquitted of attempted murder. In prison on the gun charges, he was convicted in 1991 of a drug dealer's 1986 murder, and was fatally stabbed by a fellow inmate in 2008.

On November 19, 1986, reportedly to question or arrest Davis as a suspect in multiple murders, nine police officers, with nearly 20 outside the building, raided his sister's apartment in the Bronx. In the resulting shootout, Davis, black, 20 years old, shot six officers, escaped basically uninjured, and for 17 days eluded the massive, ensuing manhunt. Once the search narrowed to a particular building, Davis hid in an unknown family's apartment. Telephoned by the police, he claimed to be holding the occupants hostage. After nightlong negotiations, convinced by news reporters' presence that the police would not shoot him, he surrendered peacefully.

Davis's attorneys, including William Kunstler, depicted the police raid as a pretense to murder Davis, both to silence his knowledge of officers' involvement in local drug trafficking and to punish him for reneging on his own, related agreement with them. In March 1988, on jury trial for killing four drug dealers—allegedly why the police had initially sought him—Davis was acquitted. In November, although convicting him of illegal gun possession, a jury acquitted him of attempted murder and of aggravated assault on the officers. Among the many outraged, some 1 000 police officers publicly demonstrated, whereas many others upheld Davis as a folk hero.

While serving five to 15 years on the gun conviction, Davis was acquitted in another murder trial. But in yet another murder trial, likewise about an alleged drug dealer, Davis, alike his brother in a separate trial, was convicted, and Davis was sentenced to 25 years to life. Meanwhile, he converted to Islam and took a new name. Maintaining his innocence, he would continue to allege that the police had framed him. Particularly with an independent documentary, released in 2003, favorable to his and his attorneys' explanation of his shootout with police, the story of Larry Davis has continued to provoke divided reactions about the putative bias and corruption of law enforcement and mainstream media. In 2008, he died via stabbing by another inmate.

Early and personal life

An aspiring rapper, Davis was known by peers as musically talented, playing multiple instruments, as well as entrepreneurial, reputedly operating small music studios in the Bronx and Manhattan, while avid for repairing and modifying motorcycles.

Davis's peers acknowledge that by midway through adolescence, Davis was dealing drugs, but claim that he ceased once the woman expecting his first child miscarried and then he learned of her crack use, which he blamed.

Davis had one child, a daughter, Larrima Davis, born July 27, 1986.

Problems with police

Davis's arrest record, starting in early 1983, involves a 1984 robbery conviction, which would premise a probation violation.  By the November 1986 shootout, a court hearing for it had been postponed four times. Soon after the successful manhunt, however, the Bronx District Attorney's office alleged that, as the New York Times then paraphrased, "Davis was part of a small, loosely organized, 'very violent' group of gunmen who have robbed, assaulted and slain drug dealers in the Bronx and northern Manhattan in recent months."

Approaching trial, whereas the prosecution refused to comment on other witnesses that it might call against Davis, his defense claimed that the prosecution had only one witness outside of law enforcement: Roy L. Gray, of Manhattan's Harlem section, who, under oath at a hearing in early October 1987, admitted to steering "traffic to coke spots." Allegedly, on October 26, 1986, in Manhattan's Washington Heights section on 163rd Street, Gray was robbed of $2, and four days later, October 30, in the borough's Harlem section, spotted the robber, later understood as Davis, about to rob some cocaine dealers. Reportedly, Gray thus alerted the police, and then rode in the police car that, trying to stop the robbers, chased the getaway car, carrying Davis and two other men, to the Bronx's Highbridge section. Reportedly, along Jerome Avenue there, upon issuing three gunshots at the police, the three men evaded arrest by vanishing into an apartment building.

In early November, seeking Davis, acting on tip, police descended on his sister's apartment, in the Bronx's Morrisania section at 1231 Fulton Avenue, but failed to find him. On November 19, police returned, incurring the infamous shootout with him. After it, police officials explained the raid as an effort to question him, but later reexplained it as an attempt to arrest him, if without an arrest warrant. In October next year, once a Jerome Avenue car chase, with gunshots fired at police, was alleged, described, and dated to three weeks before the November 19 raid, New York Police Department and Bronx District Attorney officials, deflecting questions, directed them to the other once asked why the October 30 events elicited no warrant for the arrest of Davis, unnamed as a suspect in any crime until after the November 19 shootout at his sister's apartment. According to a senior police official, who asked to remain unidentified, "once you move to introduce an accusatory instrument, you lose the benefit of being able to talk to that person."

In any case, the police reported that Gray, as a robbery victim of Davis, examined photos within hours of the Jerome Avenue incident and thus provided "positive identification" of Davis, that Davis's fingerprints were in the getaway car, that two shell casings, recovered from the scene, matched the pistol on Davis at his December 6 arrest, and that ballistics tests tied this gun to the killings of four suspected drug dealers just hours before the October 30 car chase. Davis maintained, instead, that the police had framed him for these murders. Similarly, Davis's attorneys William Kunstler and Lynne Stewart as well as Davis's peers and family would altogether contend that five years before the shootout, certain police officers had recruited Davis, age 15, to deal drugs under their sponsorship, and thereupon tolerated, likewise, the dealing of Davis's peers soon working under him, but began harassing them and communicating death threats for Davis once he stopped dealing drugs in late 1986 while withholding drug proceeds, reputedly some $40 000.

Shootout and escape

1231 Fulton Avenue in the Bronx's Morrisania section.

Lewis had complained to her brother about him bringing guns to the apartment and told him to get out; he did leave but returned. She also quoted him as telling her, "If I'm caught in the street, the police are going to shoot me. But I am going to shoot them first."

On the evening of Wednesday, November 19, 1986, acting on a tip, an NYPD team of 27 officers from the 41st Precinct and the Emergency Service Unit, the ESU, converged on the six-story, Fulton Avenue apartment building where two of Davis's sisters had adjacent apartments on the ground floor. At about 8:30 PM, 15 officers surrounded the building, 12 others entered it, and six of these entered the three-room apartment of Davis's sister Regina Lewis.

Inside were four adults and four children, Davis and his girlfriend, his sister and her husband, as well as four children. Lewis's two infant children were asleep in the bedroom at the rear. Interviewed the next day, Regina Lewis reported that once she answered a door knock, police entered the living room with guns drawn, ordered the adults to get the children out, and called, "Come out, Larry, you don't have a chance—we've got you surrounded."

At trial, the police alleged that Davis had fired first. In any case, once the police retreated, Davis slipped out and into his other sister's apartment, directly next door, and escaped out a back window. Attributing this opportunity to sheer luck, Davis claimed that when before leaving the first apartment, he stuck his head out to peek, expected to draw gunfire, which he did. But Davis claimed that the bullet, by chance, struck the doorknob of his other sister's, adjacent apartment, breaking the lock, enabling Davis to enter it.

Davis claimed that an officer had entered with a shotgun and fired at Davis, seated behind a desk, while he was holding his baby.

Police collected a 16-guage shotgun and the expended shells from a .45-caliber pistol—which police would later claim to recover from Davis during his capture a couple of weeks later—along with .32-caliber revolver and .357 Magnum pistol left behind. Ballistics tests would later link the .32-caliber revolver to the Manhattan drug dealer killing and the .45 caliber pistol to the four dead Bronx dealers. A police official said that all escape routes had been covered by officers but none apparently saw Davis leave. He also said that the wounded officers were unable to return fire effectively due to the presence in the apartment of the two infants and other bystanders. Davis fired four shotgun rounds and nine .45 caliber pistol shots; the police fired four shotgun rounds and 20 pistol shots. Neither Davis nor the two infants with him in the bedroom were wounded.

In the following year, three of the wounded officers accused the NYPD of "negligent" and "reckless" planning and execution of the raid, and blamed the Bronx detectives for creating "chaos" by bursting into the apartment before Emergency Service Unit officers could seal off escape routes.

Search and capture

The six wounded officers were carried across the street to the Bronx-Lebanon Hospital. As the manhunt began, the apartment building and vicinity were immediately searched. Police stakeouts were posted at terminals, bridges, and tunnels, and a nationwide alert was issued. Raids were staged in Chicago, Albany, Newark in New Jersey, and other cities where Davis had family or friends.

A man claiming to be Davis called ABC-TV, voiced concern about police violence, and declared he would not be taken alive. Four days after the shootout, on a tip of Davis entering his mother Mary Davis's home, police searched her building while interviewing her in a laundromat across the street. She apparently suffered a heart attack shortly afterward. Three days later, recuperating, she urged Larry to call the NAACP, which had offered to facilitate a safe surrender.

On the afternoon of December 5, 1986, police got a tip of Davis entering the Bronx housing project where his sister Margaret lived. Surrounded the 14-story building, police shut off streets and posted sharpshooters on rooftops. After searching his sister's second-floor apartment, police began searching all 312 apartments. At some point, just as one Theresa Ali, with her son, age 2, were reaching apartment 14-EB, on the 14th floor, to visit Sophia Sewer, home with her own two daughters, Davis, brandishing a pistol, gained entry.

Sophia's husband Elroy Sewer, returning home, joined the five captives at about 8 PM. At about 11:45 PM, Davis freed the two visitors and sent the husband out for Chinese takeout food and to telephone Davis's mother and sister. As the police had tapped their telephones, Larry Davis instructed Elroy Sewer to state false whereabouts of Larry. But returning with the Chinese food, Mr. Sewer was stopped and questioned by the police. At about 12:45 AM, he informed them that Davis was in his apartment. By 1:30 AM, from a nearby apartment, police had established telephone contact with Davis.

By phone with police negotiators, Davis claimed to have a hand grenade, chatted about stereo equipment, inquired about a lawyer, and speculated that the police would attack him. Throughout the talks, negotiators repeated, "There is no use running. You have nowhere to hide now." To assure Davis that he would not be harmed, police showed the press credentials of three reporters in a nearby apartment, and let him to speak to his girlfriend. At about 7 AM, he laid down his .45-caliber pistol and surrendered. As police walked him, hands handcuffed behind his back, out from the building, residents leaned out their windows, clapped, and chanted Davis's name.

Murder and attempted-murder trials

Larry Davis faced charges of weapons possession, murders of drug dealers, attempted murders of police officers, aggravated assaults on police officers, kidnapping, and automobile theft. Despite three trials in two years, juries acquitted Larry Davis of all charges except for six counts of illegal gun possession—the guns he used to shoot the police officers, whereby he was sentenced to 5 to 15 years in prison—until a jury convicted him and his brother, Eddie Davis, in the August 1986 killing of a drug dealer.

Four, Bronx drug suspects: March 1988 acquittal

In the Bronx's Morrisania section, four suspected drug dealers—Juan Rodriguez, 37, Jesus Perez, 38, Hector Figueroa, 35, and Angel Castro, 30—were executed at 829 Southern Boulevard on October 30, 1986.

The prosecution, contending that Davis was a crack dealer who specialized in the armed robbery of rival crack dealers, called over 50 witnesses, encompassing ballistic evidence and fingerprints on a cash box placing Davis at the crime scene.

Davis's attorneys William Kunstler and Lynne Stewart, in their opening and closing arguments, contended that the prosecution's evidence was fabricated, framing Davis to excuse the infamous raid. They contended Davis had been recruited into a drug ring by rogue police officers, aiming to kill him in the raid.

The jury found conflicting testimony from witnesses, and discrepancies in times stated by prosecution witnesses. After deliberating for nine days—then the longest in Bronx history for a single defendant—the jury acquitted Davis. Bronx District Attorney Paul T. Gentile later called the verdict "incomprehensible in light of the evidence."

Attempts on 9 officers: November 1988 acquittal

Davis was tried on 25 felony counts tied to his shooting of six members of the NYPD: officer John G. O'Hara, detective Arnold M. O'Sullivan, detective Thomas McCarren, sergeant Mary E. Buckley, sergeant Edward J. Coulter, and captain John J. Ridge. There were nine counts of attempted murder, six counts of aggravated assault, eight counts of criminal weapons possession, and two counts of criminal firearm use. Prosecuting were assistant district attorneys Brian Wilson and William B. Flack. Defending were William M. Kunstler and Lynne F. Stewart. Kunstler had earned, and Stewart earning, a reputation as a liberal radical. The New York Supreme Court's Justice Bernard J. Fried presided over the trial, held at the Bronx County Court.

For jury selection, in an unprecedented move, District Attorney hired a jury-selection expert, paid $100 an hour. Jury selection began on April 11, 1988. After interviewing nearly 400 prospective jurors, both sides had chosen six—five black men, one Hispanic woman—but the prosecution, alleging systematic exclusion of whites, asked for a halt and to recall excused whites. The defense, then alleging systematic exclusion of black women, lest they sympathize with Davis, asked the judge to deny the request. On May 18, the judge removed all six jurors to start over. And on June 28, the judge declared a mistrial once the only white juror—among 11 blacks—reported his wife ill and hazarded that voting to acquit might incur harassment by police. The final jury was six black men, four black women, one Hispanic man, and one Hispanic woman.

The defense contended that Davis had broken a pact to deal drugs under corrupt officers' sponsorship, was marked for a police hit, and, once they fired first, returned fire in self-defense. Reporting two days after the jury's verdicts, journalist Sam Verhovek comments, "The assertion that Mr. Davis was recruited as a youth by corrupt policemen was made by lawyers for the defense in opening and closing statements. Such statements are not evidence in a trial and this assertion by the defense was not supported by any evidence during four months of testimony." Yet in October's first week, the defense's first witness, Larry's mother, Mary Davis, provided testimony to that very effect, whereupon the prosecutor merely attenuated it. In any case, the pivotal disputes were who shot first, with which gun, and from where, answers potentially implied by a 12-guage, double-barrel shotgun's fired slug found lodged in a dresser within the bedroom where Davis, cornered, had shot his way out.

In September's last week, the prosecution called its 43rd and final witness, former detective Thomas McCarren, just days into retirement on medical disability as the most seriously wounded by Davis. As the "point man," McCarren had been the first officer into the apartment. He testified that once in the living room, he saw Davis, rising from a sofa with a handgun, run off. "He turned around and we were looking at each other face to face. I recognized him immediately," McCarren said at trial. Davis fled to a back bedroom, said McCarren, who, following, entered the hallway toward it: ''the next time I saw him was when he shot me." McCarren, as reporting journalist William Blair adds, "said he did not fire his revolver because two young children were in the line of fire in the back hallway," but otherwise, "testified that when he was shot with a .45-caliber bullet, his revolver fell out of his hands." McCarren said he next saw his own, .38-caliber revolver several months later, in the summer of 1987, when the police department returned it to him.

As to recovery of McCarren's revolver from the living room—the side afar from McCarren's spot when he was shot—the defense suggested a its planting there in a coverup. Kunstler posed, ''That .38 was never fired because you had a shotgun in your hands, didn't you?'' ''I definitely did not have a shotgun,'' McCarren replied. He testified that as officers prepared in a nearby parking lot, he gave his shotgun to a detective assigned to guard the building's rear. Questioned further, McCarren also claimed to load his shotgun with buckshot, not slugs. Davis's own shotgun, fired and left behind, was 16-guage, not the dresser slug's 12-guage. Otherwise, ballistics evidence linked the .45 gun allegedly seized from Davis at his December 1986 capture to this November 1986 shooting of six officers, but also to the October 1986 execution of four drug dealers in the Bronx—murders that Davis, now, had already been acquitted of—and to, allegedly, the gunshots that Davis's robbery trio, caught robbing more dealers just hours later, fired at the pursuing police officers.

But defense lawyer Lynn Stewart recalls that Davis's own explanation gained pivotal confirmation by a forensics expert. The shotgun slug's trajectory into the dresser placed the shooter well inside the bedroom—a shooter unlikely to have received gunfire from the bedroom while approaching it—whereas a trajectory from the hallway would place the shotgun near the ceiling. Another defense witness key was Larry's mother, Mary Davis, owner of the house where Larry lived on the second floor. Stewart asked her about visitors in 1986 as well as earlier. Recalling "a lot of policemen," Mary Davis said, "They would come and ask me where was Larry. Sometimes they would go straight up to his room.'' But, cross-examining her, chief prosecutor Brian Wilson, as journalist William Blair soon reports, "sought to counter this suggestion of a chummy relationship between the defendant and the police." Blair named police visits to, instead, ask about a boarding guest, to arrest another of her sons, and to investigate a homicide witnessed by both Mary and Larry in front of the house.

But additionally, Mary Davis testified that ahead of the November 19 raid by a few weeks, on October 31—incidentally, the day after Davis, allegedly, executed four drug dealers simultaneously in the Bronx and, hours later in Manhattan, was robbing more drug dealers before firing gunshots at police chasing him—four police officers visited her house seeking Larry, suspected in the four slayings. She testified that one of the officers, whose name she did not know, pushed her and told her she had "raised a dirty bastard, and you tell him he's going to get a bullet," in his head. Mary Davis testified that she told her son of this and complained of it the New York Police Department's own Civilian Complaint Review Board. Police spokesperson Sergeant John Clifford, affirming that the complaint board had received her complaint, named the officer as Joseph Nealon, a detective. Further, the complaint board had found him guilty of verbal discourtesy to Mary Davis and of pushing her, why Detective Nealon then received from the police department a minor reprimand called a "command discipline," Sergeant Clifford explained.

On November 20, 1988, after deliberating for 38 hours over five days, the jury returned. It found Davis guilty of illegal gun possession, yet acquitted him of all other charges, even of criminal firearm use. Remanded to the Metropolitan Correction Center, in Manhattan, to await December 15 sentencing on the six gun convictions, Davis, being led out of the courtroom, flashed a grin. Detective McCarren, calling it "a racist verdict," asserted, "The day this happened, a bunch of good, honest police officers went to lock up Larry Davis because he had killed people, and not for anything else." Defense attorney Kunstler said that the verdict had, instead, "sent out a message that white officers are not going to be able to shoot down black youths without a proper response." Defense attorney Stewart quipped, "I really think that the black community is no longer going to have black Sambos. They're going to have black Rambos." A day or two Later, the jury forewoman called Davis a "young and innocent kid who got recruited by a few corrupt policemen." Meanwhile, roughly 1 000 police officers publicly demonstrated against the verdict, which Mayor Edward Koch lamented.

Manhattan drug suspect: December 1989 acquittal

In Manhattan's Harlem section, during an apparent drug robbery, a suspected drug dealer—Victor Lagombra, 36, residing at 512 West 156th Street—was killed at 521 West 159th Street on September 16, 1986.

The five-week trial began in October 1989. The prosecution alleged that Davis was robbing two drug dealers when Lagombra entered the apartment, prompting Davis's "cold-blooded act of savagery." Ballistics evidence was offered to implicate Davis's .32-caliber revolver.

Two defense witnesses testified that Davis was in Florida then, making a rap album. After deliberating three days, the jury returned on Saturday night, December 4, with the verdict, again not guilty. Although not Davis's attorney in this case, William Kunstler attributed the repeated prosecution of Davis to a conspiracy.

Bronx drug suspect: March 1991 conviction

In the Bronx, a reputed drug dealer—Raymond Vizcaino—was murdered in a Webster Avenue apartment in August 1986.

In January 1987, one month after the manhunt had led to Larry Davis's arrest, his older brother Eddie Davis, too, was arrested and charged in Vizcaino's murder. Allegedly, Eddie and Larry, along with two others, attempting robbery, shot through the apartment door, killing Vizcaino. A jury convicted Eddie Davis in June 1989.

Larry Davis's trial began five months later. On the night of March 14, 1991, the jury found him guilty. Once receiving the sentence, 25 years to life in prison, he made a loud scene, airing for about an hour his longstanding complaint that the police and the judicial system were conducting a vendetta against him, until the judge expelled him from the courtroom.

Death

Starting 2008, Davis was serving his sentence in New York state at Shawangunk Correctional Facility, near the hamlet Wallkill in Ulster County. On February 20, at about 7 PM, during a recreational break in the yard, Davis was using his walking cane to fend off an inmate from attacking him with a 9 inch (23 cm) long metal shiv. Davis was unsuccessful and was stabbed numerous times. The officer called for assistance and the attacker was restrained and taken to the Special Housing Unit to remain in segregated custody. Davis was taken to the facility infirmary where first aid was rendered. Davis lost much blood, lost consciousness and eventually showed no vital signs. Not being a trauma level infirmary, the supervising nurse called for an emergency transport by ambulance to St. Luke's Hospital in nearby Newburgh, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.

After questioning by the state police and the inspector general's office of the DOCS—the New York State Department of Correctional Services—inmate Luis Rosado, 42, was charged with murder. Serving 25 years to life on murder and assault convictions in the early 1980s, he had been denied parole in 2007. On the morning after this stabbing, Rosado was arraigned at Shawangunk Town Court. DOCS officials reported that both inmmates had long disciplinary records, including for fights with other inmates, but no record of previous violence between the two.

On July 31, 2008, an Ulster County grand jury indicted Rosado on nine felony charges, including three counts of murder, assault, criminal possession of a weapon and possession of prison contraband. The murder charges carried a potential sentence of life without parole. After his arrest, Rosado was moved to Clinton Correctional Facility, in New York state near the Canadian border. On Wednesday, February 25, 2009, Luis Rosado pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter in was sentenced to an additional 10 years in prison, to be served consecutively to his current 25-to-life sentence for murder.

Davis is survived by his daughter Larrima Davis.

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