‘Major developments’ could lead to release of convict in 1985 El Dorado Hills slaying
El Dorado County prosecutors are expected to announce “major developments” Thursday in Placerville involving the 1985 stabbing death of Jane Hylton, a 54-year-old newspaper columnist whose slaying resulted in the trial of a man whose conviction was thrown out last year following the discovery of new DNA evidence.
Ricky Davis was convicted in August 2005 of second-degree murder and was sentenced to 16 years in state prison. Davis, 54, had always maintained he was not involved in the slaying and last year his murder conviction was reversed and a new trial was set for April after the Northern California Innocence Project got involved.
Now, Davis, who is in custody in the El Dorado County Jail, is expected to be released Thursday, according to lawyer Melissa O’Connell, whose work with the innocence project helped lead to the original conviction being overturned.
“We don’t know much right now, except we’re going to be in El Dorado County (Thursday) and we believe that Ricky’s going to be released from custody,” O’Connell said. “But beyond that, we know very little.”
El Dorado County District Attorney Vern Pierson declined to comment Wednesday night, but he and Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert are expected to brief the media on new developments in the case and DNA testing.
Schubert’s office has been a leading force in the use of DNA evidence to crack cold cases, techniques that in 2018 led to the arrests of James DeAngelo, a suspect in the Golden State Killer/East Area Rapist case, and Roy Waller, who has been ordered to stand trial in the NorCal Rapist case.
Hylton, who covered social events for the Foothills Times, was found dead inside an El Dorado Hills home on July 7, 1985, according to a Bee report. Davis, then 20, lived in the house where she was slain, as did his 19-year-old girlfriend, Connie Dahl, according to the innocence project, which is part of the Santa Clara University School of Law.
“Davis and Dahl told detectives they had gone to a party the night before and returned home at 3:30 a.m. where they found Hylton’s daughter waiting outside,” according to an online synopsis of the case by the project. “She told them that she had gone out with a group of boys that night and was afraid her mother would be upset with her for being out too late.
“The three entered the house together. Davis saw blood in the hallway outside the master bedroom and found Hylton’s body on the bed. Davis and Dahl immediately called 911 to report the crime. All three maintained they were not involved in the murder and did not know who committed the crime.”
The case went unsolved until detectives reopened it in late 1999, the project said, and “detectives interrogated Dahl four times over the next 18 months using techniques known to increase the chances of false confessions.”
“Dahl ultimately changed her story for police and implicated Davis as the killer,” according to the project. “She also implicated herself in the crime, telling the police that she bit the victim during the attack.”
The innocence project, working with Pierson’s office, later arranged for DNA testing from crime scene evidence that included Hylton’s nightgown and material under her fingernails.
“DNA test results revealed an unknown male DNA profile on the nightgown in the area of the bite mark and a consistent male DNA profile under the victim’s fingernails,” the project’s synopsis said. “The test results excluded Davis, Dahl and Hylton’s daughter as the sources of the DNA.”
That led to the murder conviction being overturned in 2019 after project lawyers argued that “had the original jury heard the DNA results, it would have likely reached a different outcome,” the project synopsis says.
The timing was critical because until January 2017 state law required new evidence “point unerringly to innocence,” the project said. That law was changed and now individuals claiming they were wrongfully convicted can argue that “new evidence would likely have been compelling to a jury,” the project said.
Dahl, who received a one-year county jail sentence in the case, died in 2014, according to the Mountain Democrat in Placerville, which followed the case extensively.
Davis, who was booked into the county jail last May to await his new trial, is now listed in online jail records as awaiting a “removal order” with his scheduled release date “to be determined.”
This story was originally published February 12, 2020 at 6:20 PM.