Exclusive: DA rejected offer for Land Park slaying suspect to agree to life sentence

Months before Sacramento prosecutors decided to seek the death penalty against the suspect in the Land Park slaying of Kate Tibbitts, public defenders offered a deal in which Troy Davis would agree to admit guilt in return for a sentence of life without parole, The Sacramento Bee has learned.

Supervising Public Defender Norm Dawson confirmed the offer Wednesday, following the disclosure that prosecutors were planning to seek the death penalty against Davis.

Davis, a 51-year-old parolee, is accused of breaking into the 61-year-old woman’s home last September, sexually assaulting and killing her, killing her two dogs and then setting the house ablaze.

“On January 28th of this year, the defense extended an offer to the District Attorney’s Office,” Dawson wrote in an email to The Bee. “The offer included an admission to the charged special circumstance and a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.

“The District Attorney’s Office rejected the offer.”

Chief Deputy District Attorney Rod Norgaard declined to comment on the offer.

“Because it’s a pending case, our ethical responsibilities as prosecutors don’t allow us to comment on the evidence or any plea negotiations,” Norgaard said.

Tibbitts’ brother, Dan, also declined to comment, other than to say, “My family fully supports the District Attorney’s Office.”

The Tibbitts slaying has riled law enforcement officials who contend Davis never should have been on the streets at the time.

Davis has a criminal record in Sacramento and Santa Cruz counties that dates back to 2013, and he was charged in a vehicle theft last June in Sacramento County but released from jail before he went before a judge. He then disappeared until his arrest shortly after Tibbitts’ slaying.

Death penalty prosecutions are relatively rare in Sacramento, but are used in cases in which prosecutors determine they are warranted, given the circumstances of the crime.

Although Gov. Gavin Newsom has ordered a halt to executions and the dismantling of Death Row at San Quentin State Prison, prosecutors sometimes still seek a death penalty prosecution with the knowledge that a future governor may allow the punishment to return.

The last death penalty conviction in Sacramento came against Luis Bracamontes, who killed a Sacramento sheriff’s deputy and a Placer County detective during a 2014 rampage.

Offers like the one Dawson described are not unheard of.

Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert — who is running in June’s primary to be state attorney general — initially had pursued a death penalty case against Joseph James DeAngelo, the Golden State Killer and East Area Rapist suspect.

But, because the case was decades old and prosecutors feared many victims and witnesses would die before he could face trial, Schubert and other D.A.s agreed to public defenders’ offer to have him plead guilty in exchange for a deal in which he will spend the rest of his life in prison.