Larry Davis (criminal)
Encyclopedia
Larry Davis who changed his name to Adam Abdul-Hakeem in 1989, was a New Yorker
who shot six New York City police officers on November 19, 1986 when they raided his sister's Bronx
apartment. The police said that the raid was executed in order to question Davis about the killing of four suspected drug dealers. At trial, Davis's defense attorneys claimed that the raid was staged to murder him because of his knowledge of the involvement of corrupt police in the drug business. With the help of family contacts and street friends, he eluded capture for the next 17 days despite a massive manhunt.
Once the search was narrowed to a single building, he took several hostages but surrendered to police when the presence of reporters assured him that he would not be harmed.
Davis was acquitted of attempted murder charges in the police shootout case, and was acquitted of murder charges in the case involving the slain drug dealers. He was found guilty of weapons possession in the shootout case, acquitted in another murder case, and was found guilty in a later murder case and was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. In 2008, Davis was stabbed to death in a fight with another inmate.
The Larry Davis case generated controversy. Many were outraged by his actions and acquittal,
but others regarded him as a folk hero
for his ability to elude capture in the massive manhunt, or as the embodiment of a community's frustration with the police,
or as "a symbol of resistance" because "he fought back at a time when African-Americans were being killed by white police officers."
, and two more. During the weeks before the raid, he knew he was wanted by the police and avoided his own apartment, spending time at his girlfriend's and at his two sisters' adjoining apartments on Fulton Avenue. At age 20, Davis had a record of arrests and convictions dating back to early 1983 and had violated his probation
for a 1984 robbery.
Acting on a tip, in the evening of Wednesday November 19, 1986 a team of 27 officers and detectives from the Bronx 41st Precinct and the NYPD's elite Emergency Service Unit
assembled in a parking lot. Wearing bulletproof vests and armed with shotgun
s and handgun
s, they went to the six-story Fulton Avenue building where two of Davis's sisters had adjoining apartments on the ground floor.
The police later said the raid was an attempt to question Davis. Although a "positive identification" of Davis had been made in a car chase 20 days earlier in which shots were fired at the police, he had not been named as a suspect in any crime, and no arrest warrant
was issued until after the raid and shootout. A senior police official said that no charges had been brought beforehand because "once you move to introduce an accusatory instrument you lose the benefit of being able to talk to that person." A lawyer for Davis said the raid was staged to kill him to suppress his knowledge of police involvement in drug sales.
According to an interview with Regina Lewis the next day, she answered a knock at the door and the police entered the living room with guns drawn. They told the adults to get the children out, and called out "Come out, Larry, you don't have a chance - we've got you surrounded." Thinking the police were about to start firing, Lewis shouted "Don't shoot! My babies are back there!" At trial, accounts would differ as to whether Davis or the police fired first. From the darkened bedroom Davis fired a 16-gauge sawed-off shotgun
and a .45-caliber semi-automatic pistol, wounding six of the seven officers in the living room, two seriously. The police took cover, returning fire as they retreated. In the confusion no one kept track of Davis, who slipped into his other sister's apartment and escaped out a back window.
Police collected the shotgun and the expended shells from the .45-caliber pistol that Davis took with him. A .32-caliber revolver
and .357 Magnum pistol were also 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.
In the interview with Regina Lewis, she said that she 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."
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 blasts and nine .45 caliber pistol shots; the police fired four shotgun blasts and 20 pistol shots. Neither Davis nor the two infants with him in the bedroom were wounded.
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.
s were set up at terminals, bridges and tunnels leading out of the city and a nationwide alarm was issued. As the manhunt spread, raids were staged in Chicago, Albany, Newark and other cities where Davis had relatives or friends. A man who said he was Davis called ABC-TV, expressing fears he would be beaten by police and stating he would not be taken alive.
Acting on a tip that Davis had been seen entering his mother's home four days after the escape, police searched the building while interviewing Mary Davis in a laundromat across the street. She suffered an apparent heart attack shortly thereafter.
As she recuperated three days later, she urged her son to call the NAACP
, who had offered to help arrange a safe surrender.
Davis was the youngest of 15 children.
On the afternoon of December 5, 1986 police received a tip that Davis had been seen entering the Bronx housing project where his sister Margaret lived. They surrounded the 14-story building, closed off local streets and posted sharpshooters on nearby rooftops. After searching his sister's second-floor apartment, police began a systematic canvass of all 312 units. During the afternoon, Davis forced his way into a family's 14th-floor apartment just as a neighbor and her son arrived, holding both families at gunpoint for several hours. After threatening the safety of the four remaining hostages, at 11:45 p.m. Davis released the two visitors and sent the hostage husband out to pick up food from a nearby Chinese restaurant. He also ordered the husband to call his mother's and sister's tapped telephones and give false location information. When the husband returned with the food he was stopped for questioning by the police and informed them that his wife and two daughters were being held.
Police set up a command post in a nearby apartment and by 1:30 a.m. had established telephone contact. At one point Davis threatened to kill the hostages with a hand grenade, at other points he chatted with negotiators about stereo equipment, asked about a lawyer and showed concern for his own safety, saying that he was afraid police would harm him. Throughout, negotiators repeated "There is no use running, you have nowhere to hide now."
To assure Davis that he would not be harmed, police showed him the press credentials of three reporters in a nearby apartment and allowed him to speak to his girlfriend.
At about 7 a.m. Larry Davis laid down his .45-caliber pistol and surrendered.
As he was taken from the building in handcuffs, residents leaned out of their windows, clapped and chanted "Lar-ry! Lar-ry!".
and Lynne Stewart
contended, without producing any evidence, that the prosecution evidence was fabricated and that the murder charges were a frame-up to excuse the police raid on Davis's sister's apartment. They further contended that Davis had been recruited into a drug ring by rogue police officers and that the object of the raid was to kill him. The prosecution contended that Davis was a crack dealer who specialized in the armed robbery of other crack dealers, and presented testimony from more than 50 witnesses, including ballistic evidence and fingerprints on a cash box that placed Davis at the scene of the October 1986 murders. The jury found conflicting testimony from witnesses, and discrepancies in times given by prosecution witnesses. After deliberating for nine days, the longest in Bronx history for a single defendant, the jury acquitted Davis of the charges.
During jury selection, each side charged the other with racist tactics. The defense charged that the prosecution was deliberately excusing black women because they might be sympathetic to Davis. The judge found that the defense as well had abused their peremptory challenge
s, "to exclude white jurors on racially motivated grounds". Judge Fried dismissed the first six seated jurors and declared a mistrial.
A second mistrial was declared at the request of both sides after the only white juror on the new jury expressed a concern about possible police harassment if he voted to acquit Davis.
The jury finally seated was made up of ten blacks and two Hispanics.
Once the trial began, ballistic experts linked the shootings to the .45-caliber pistol seized when Davis was captured. Several wounded officers, including "point man" Thomas McCarren who entered first, identified Davis as the person who had shot them.
McCarren testified that when he entered the apartment Davis got up from the couch and ran down a narrow hall to the back bedroom carrying a handgun. McCarren pursued, and the next time he saw Davis was when Davis shot him in the mouth with the .45 pistol.
A 12-gauge shotgun slug was found embedded in a drawer in the bedroom and the defense suggested that McCarren was carrying a 12-gauge shotgun and was the first to fire. McCarren said that he had been carrying a shotgun earlier in the evening but had turned it over to another detective assigned to cover the rear of the building, and was armed with only a 38-caliber service revolver when he entered the apartment.
The defense contended that Davis feared for his life and acted in self-defense
. Without producing any evidence, they charged that Bronx police were corrupt and involved in the drug trade, and that the police had opened fire first. Davis's mother testified that a police officer had pushed her and threatened to kill her son two weeks before the raid, and that she had warned her son, while also complaining to the Police Department's Civilian Complaint Review Board. The Board sustained her complaint.
On November 20, 1988, after deliberating 38 hours over five days, the jury acquitted Davis of attempted murder and aggravated assault charges but found him guilty of six counts of criminal possession of a weapon.
Interviewed by a reporter afterward, the jury forewoman said Davis was a "young and innocent kid who got recruited by a few corrupt policemen... they came in to wipe him out... they wanted him dead so he couldn't squeal on them... they would have killed him." She said the jury believed the defense assertion that the police fired first and that Davis was defending himself.
McCarren, the detective most seriously wounded and forced by his injuries to retire, called the jury's verdict "a racist verdict", and said "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 "The jury understood what happened – that he acted in self-defense." Defense attorney Stewart said "I really think that the black community is no longer going to have black Sambos, they're going to have black Rambos."
Davis was sentenced to 5 to 15 years in prison on the weapons possession charges.
After a five-week trial and three days of deliberations, Davis was found not guilty. Although William Kunstler was not Davis's attorney in this case, he afterward repeated earlier statements that Davis had helped dishonest police sell drugs, and said that the constant accusations against Davis were a conspiracy.
According to the prosecution, Eddie Davis and Larry Davis, along with two others, shot Raymond Vizcaino to death through an apartment door on Webster Avenue in the Bronx. A jury found Eddie Davis guilty in June 1989.
Larry Davis went on trial for the Vizcaino murder five months later. He was found guilty on March 14, 1991.
Already serving 5 to 15 years on weapons charges, he was sentenced to serve an additional 25 years to life. After the sentencing, Davis spoke for about an hour, repeating his longstanding complaint that the police and the court system were engaged in a vendetta against him.
In July 2006, Variety
magazine reported that Roc-A-Fella Records co-founder Damon Dash
was planning a documentary on Davis.
The BET
documentary series American Gangster
did a profile on Larry Davis. Revealed in that episode was that Davis arranged to be interviewed by the show on the same day he died.
The second episode of the 2010 A&E
television series Fugitive Chronicles dramatizes the manhunt for Davis and features interviews with involved police officers.
The 1997 Sidney Lumet
film Night Falls on Manhattan
was inspired by Davis's 1986 shootout with the police.
near the Ulster County
hamlet of Wallkill
. At 7 p.m. February 20, 2008, correctional officers overseeing one of the yards noticed inmates congregating around an apparent fight. When they went to break it up, they found Davis had been stabbed repeatedly with a nine-inch (23 cm) metal shank
. He was taken 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 New York State Department of Correctional Services
's (DOCS) inspector general
's office, another inmate, Luis Rosado, 42, was charged with murder
.
Rosado was already serving a sentence of 25 years to life
for murder and assault charges in the early 1980s, and had been denied parole
in 2007. He was arraigned at Shawangunk
Town Court the next morning. DOCS officials said both he and Davis had long disciplinary records, including fights with other inmates, but there was no record of any previous violence between the two.
On July 31, 2008, an Ulster County grand jury
indicted
Rosado on nine felony
charges related to the stabbing, including three different 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
, located in upstate New York close to the Canadian border. On Wednesday, February 25th, 2009, Luis Rosado pled guilty to first-degree manslaughter in Ulster County Court and was sentenced to an additional 10 years in prison that is to be served consecutively with his current 25 years to life sentence for murder.
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
who shot six New York City police officers on November 19, 1986 when they raided his sister's Bronx
The Bronx
The Bronx is the northernmost of the five boroughs of New York City. It is also known as Bronx County, the last of the 62 counties of New York State to be incorporated...
apartment. The police said that the raid was executed in order to question Davis about the killing of four suspected drug dealers. At trial, Davis's defense attorneys claimed that the raid was staged to murder him because of his knowledge of the involvement of corrupt police in the drug business. With the help of family contacts and street friends, he eluded capture for the next 17 days despite a massive manhunt.
Once the search was narrowed to a single building, he took several hostages but surrendered to police when the presence of reporters assured him that he would not be harmed.
Davis was acquitted of attempted murder charges in the police shootout case, and was acquitted of murder charges in the case involving the slain drug dealers. He was found guilty of weapons possession in the shootout case, acquitted in another murder case, and was found guilty in a later murder case and was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. In 2008, Davis was stabbed to death in a fight with another inmate.
The Larry Davis case generated controversy. Many were outraged by his actions and acquittal,
but others regarded him as a folk hero
Folk hero
A folk hero is a type of hero, real, fictional, or mythological. The single salient characteristic which makes a character a folk hero is the imprinting of the name, personality and deeds of the character in the popular consciousness. This presence in the popular consciousness is evidenced by...
for his ability to elude capture in the massive manhunt, or as the embodiment of a community's frustration with the police,
or as "a symbol of resistance" because "he fought back at a time when African-Americans were being killed by white police officers."
Background
Davis was sought as a suspect in seven murders: the execution-style killing of four drug dealers in a Bronx apartment, another during an apparent drug robbery in ManhattanManhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
, and two more. During the weeks before the raid, he knew he was wanted by the police and avoided his own apartment, spending time at his girlfriend's and at his two sisters' adjoining apartments on Fulton Avenue. At age 20, Davis had a record of arrests and convictions dating back to early 1983 and had violated his probation
Parole
Parole may have different meanings depending on the field and judiciary system. All of the meanings originated from the French parole . Following its use in late-resurrected Anglo-French chivalric practice, the term became associated with the release of prisoners based on prisoners giving their...
for a 1984 robbery.
Acting on a tip, in the evening of Wednesday November 19, 1986 a team of 27 officers and detectives from the Bronx 41st Precinct and the NYPD's elite Emergency Service Unit
Emergency Service Unit
The Emergency Service Unit is the multi-faceted and multi-talented element within municipal, county, or state authority law enforcement agency’s Special Operations command. ESU’s exist mainly in the regional New York City Area but includes several jurisdictions outside the region. ESU is also...
assembled in a parking lot. Wearing bulletproof vests and armed with shotgun
Shotgun
A shotgun is a firearm that is usually designed to be fired from the shoulder, which uses the energy of a fixed shell to fire a number of small spherical pellets called shot, or a solid projectile called a slug...
s and handgun
Handgun
A handgun is a firearm designed to be held and operated by one hand. This characteristic differentiates handguns as a general class of firearms from long guns such as rifles and shotguns ....
s, they went to the six-story Fulton Avenue building where two of Davis's sisters had adjoining apartments on the ground floor.
The police later said the raid was an attempt to question Davis. Although a "positive identification" of Davis had been made in a car chase 20 days earlier in which shots were fired at the police, he had not been named as a suspect in any crime, and no arrest warrant
Arrest warrant
An arrest warrant is a warrant issued by and on behalf of the state, which authorizes the arrest and detention of an individual.-Canada:Arrest warrants are issued by a judge or justice of the peace under the Criminal Code of Canada....
was issued until after the raid and shootout. A senior police official said that no charges had been brought beforehand because "once you move to introduce an accusatory instrument you lose the benefit of being able to talk to that person." A lawyer for Davis said the raid was staged to kill him to suppress his knowledge of police involvement in drug sales.
Raid and escape
At about 8:30 p.m. 15 officers surrounded the building and 12 others entered; nine of these went to the three-room apartment of Davis's sister Regina Lewis and seven entered it. Davis, his girlfriend, his sister and her husband were in the apartment along with four children. Lewis's two infant children were asleep in the bedroom at the rear.According to an interview with Regina Lewis the next day, she answered a knock at the door and the police entered the living room with guns drawn. They told the adults to get the children out, and called out "Come out, Larry, you don't have a chance - we've got you surrounded." Thinking the police were about to start firing, Lewis shouted "Don't shoot! My babies are back there!" At trial, accounts would differ as to whether Davis or the police fired first. From the darkened bedroom Davis fired a 16-gauge sawed-off shotgun
Sawed-off shotgun
A sawed-off shotgun also called a sawn-off shotgun and a short-barreled shotgun , is a type of shotgun with a shorter gun barrel and often a shorter or absent stock....
and a .45-caliber semi-automatic pistol, wounding six of the seven officers in the living room, two seriously. The police took cover, returning fire as they retreated. In the confusion no one kept track of Davis, who slipped into his other sister's apartment and escaped out a back window.
Police collected the shotgun and the expended shells from the .45-caliber pistol that Davis took with him. A .32-caliber revolver
Revolver
A revolver is a repeating firearm that has a cylinder containing multiple chambers and at least one barrel for firing. The first revolver ever made was built by Elisha Collier in 1818. The percussion cap revolver was invented by Samuel Colt in 1836. This weapon became known as the Colt Paterson...
and .357 Magnum pistol were also left behind.
Ballistics
Ballistics
Ballistics is the science of mechanics that deals with the flight, behavior, and effects of projectiles, especially bullets, gravity bombs, rockets, or the like; the science or art of designing and accelerating projectiles so as to achieve a desired performance.A ballistic body is a body which is...
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.
In the interview with Regina Lewis, she said that she 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."
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 blasts and nine .45 caliber pistol shots; the police fired four shotgun blasts and 20 pistol shots. Neither Davis nor the two infants with him in the bedroom were wounded.
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 and the manhunt began. The surrounding area and the rest of the building were searched immediately. Police stakeoutStakeout
Stakeout is a 1987 film directed by John Badham and starring Richard Dreyfuss, Emilio Estevez, Madeleine Stowe, Aidan Quinn, and Forest Whitaker...
s were set up at terminals, bridges and tunnels leading out of the city and a nationwide alarm was issued. As the manhunt spread, raids were staged in Chicago, Albany, Newark and other cities where Davis had relatives or friends. A man who said he was Davis called ABC-TV, expressing fears he would be beaten by police and stating he would not be taken alive.
Acting on a tip that Davis had been seen entering his mother's home four days after the escape, police searched the building while interviewing Mary Davis in a laundromat across the street. She suffered an apparent heart attack shortly thereafter.
As she recuperated three days later, she urged her son to call the NAACP
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, usually abbreviated as NAACP, is an African-American civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909. Its mission is "to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to...
, who had offered to help arrange a safe surrender.
Davis was the youngest of 15 children.
On the afternoon of December 5, 1986 police received a tip that Davis had been seen entering the Bronx housing project where his sister Margaret lived. They surrounded the 14-story building, closed off local streets and posted sharpshooters on nearby rooftops. After searching his sister's second-floor apartment, police began a systematic canvass of all 312 units. During the afternoon, Davis forced his way into a family's 14th-floor apartment just as a neighbor and her son arrived, holding both families at gunpoint for several hours. After threatening the safety of the four remaining hostages, at 11:45 p.m. Davis released the two visitors and sent the hostage husband out to pick up food from a nearby Chinese restaurant. He also ordered the husband to call his mother's and sister's tapped telephones and give false location information. When the husband returned with the food he was stopped for questioning by the police and informed them that his wife and two daughters were being held.
Police set up a command post in a nearby apartment and by 1:30 a.m. had established telephone contact. At one point Davis threatened to kill the hostages with a hand grenade, at other points he chatted with negotiators about stereo equipment, asked about a lawyer and showed concern for his own safety, saying that he was afraid police would harm him. Throughout, negotiators repeated "There is no use running, you have nowhere to hide now."
To assure Davis that he would not be harmed, police showed him the press credentials of three reporters in a nearby apartment and allowed him to speak to his girlfriend.
At about 7 a.m. Larry Davis laid down his .45-caliber pistol and surrendered.
As he was taken from the building in handcuffs, residents leaned out of their windows, clapped and chanted "Lar-ry! Lar-ry!".
Trials
After the shootout and manhunt the Bronx District Attorney's office, together with District Attorney offices in Manhattan and Long Island, had a long list of charges against Larry Davis including weapons possession, murder of drug dealers, attempted murder of police, kidnapping, and automobile theft. Despite three trials in two years, prosecutors were unable to convince a jury of Larry Davis' guilt for any but the weapons charge, finally getting a conviction over four years after the shootout.Murder of four Bronx drug dealers
During their opening and closing arguments Davis's attorneys William KunstlerWilliam Kunstler
William Moses Kunstler was an American self-described "radical lawyer" and civil rights activist, known for his controversial clients...
and Lynne Stewart
Lynne Stewart
Lynne Irene Stewart is a former attorney who represented controversial, poor, and often unpopular defendants who was convicted on charges of conspiracy and providing material support to terrorists in 2005, and sentenced to 28 months in prison. Her felony conviction led to her being automatically...
contended, without producing any evidence, that the prosecution evidence was fabricated and that the murder charges were a frame-up to excuse the police raid on Davis's sister's apartment. They further contended that Davis had been recruited into a drug ring by rogue police officers and that the object of the raid was to kill him. The prosecution contended that Davis was a crack dealer who specialized in the armed robbery of other crack dealers, and presented testimony from more than 50 witnesses, including ballistic evidence and fingerprints on a cash box that placed Davis at the scene of the October 1986 murders. The jury found conflicting testimony from witnesses, and discrepancies in times given by prosecution witnesses. After deliberating for nine days, the longest in Bronx history for a single defendant, the jury acquitted Davis of the charges.
Attempted murder of nine police officers
Davis was next tried for shooting six police officers during the apartment raid. He was charged with nine counts of attempted murder, six counts of aggravated assault, two of criminal use of a firearm and eight of criminal possession of a weapon.During jury selection, each side charged the other with racist tactics. The defense charged that the prosecution was deliberately excusing black women because they might be sympathetic to Davis. The judge found that the defense as well had abused their peremptory challenge
Peremptory challenge
Peremptory challenge usually refers to a right in jury selection for the defense and prosecution to reject a certain number of potential jurors who appear to have an unfavorable bias without having to give any reason...
s, "to exclude white jurors on racially motivated grounds". Judge Fried dismissed the first six seated jurors and declared a mistrial.
A second mistrial was declared at the request of both sides after the only white juror on the new jury expressed a concern about possible police harassment if he voted to acquit Davis.
The jury finally seated was made up of ten blacks and two Hispanics.
Once the trial began, ballistic experts linked the shootings to the .45-caliber pistol seized when Davis was captured. Several wounded officers, including "point man" Thomas McCarren who entered first, identified Davis as the person who had shot them.
McCarren testified that when he entered the apartment Davis got up from the couch and ran down a narrow hall to the back bedroom carrying a handgun. McCarren pursued, and the next time he saw Davis was when Davis shot him in the mouth with the .45 pistol.
A 12-gauge shotgun slug was found embedded in a drawer in the bedroom and the defense suggested that McCarren was carrying a 12-gauge shotgun and was the first to fire. McCarren said that he had been carrying a shotgun earlier in the evening but had turned it over to another detective assigned to cover the rear of the building, and was armed with only a 38-caliber service revolver when he entered the apartment.
The defense contended that Davis feared for his life and acted in self-defense
Self-defense
Self-defense, self-defence or private defense is a countermeasure that involves defending oneself, one's property or the well-being of another from physical harm. The use of the right of self-defense as a legal justification for the use of force in times of danger is available in many...
. Without producing any evidence, they charged that Bronx police were corrupt and involved in the drug trade, and that the police had opened fire first. Davis's mother testified that a police officer had pushed her and threatened to kill her son two weeks before the raid, and that she had warned her son, while also complaining to the Police Department's Civilian Complaint Review Board. The Board sustained her complaint.
On November 20, 1988, after deliberating 38 hours over five days, the jury acquitted Davis of attempted murder and aggravated assault charges but found him guilty of six counts of criminal possession of a weapon.
Interviewed by a reporter afterward, the jury forewoman said Davis was a "young and innocent kid who got recruited by a few corrupt policemen... they came in to wipe him out... they wanted him dead so he couldn't squeal on them... they would have killed him." She said the jury believed the defense assertion that the police fired first and that Davis was defending himself.
McCarren, the detective most seriously wounded and forced by his injuries to retire, called the jury's verdict "a racist verdict", and said "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 "The jury understood what happened – that he acted in self-defense." Defense attorney Stewart said "I really think that the black community is no longer going to have black Sambos, they're going to have black Rambos."
Davis was sentenced to 5 to 15 years in prison on the weapons possession charges.
Murder of Victor Lagombra
In October 1989 Davis went on trial for the September 1986 murder of Victor Lagombra, described by the prosecutor as a "mid-level" crack dealer. The prosecution charged that Davis killed Lagombra in a "cold-blooded act of savagery" when Lagombra walked into a Manhattan apartment while Davis and two other men were robbing two drug dealers. Ballistics tests showed that Davis's 32-caliber revolver was used in the killing. The defense produced two witnesses who testified that Davis was in Florida making a rap album on the day of the murder.After a five-week trial and three days of deliberations, Davis was found not guilty. Although William Kunstler was not Davis's attorney in this case, he afterward repeated earlier statements that Davis had helped dishonest police sell drugs, and said that the constant accusations against Davis were a conspiracy.
Murder of Raymond Vizcaino
In January 1987 Davis's older brother Eddie Davis was arrested on charges of murdering a drug dealer during an August 1986 robbery attempt.According to the prosecution, Eddie Davis and Larry Davis, along with two others, shot Raymond Vizcaino to death through an apartment door on Webster Avenue in the Bronx. A jury found Eddie Davis guilty in June 1989.
Larry Davis went on trial for the Vizcaino murder five months later. He was found guilty on March 14, 1991.
Already serving 5 to 15 years on weapons charges, he was sentenced to serve an additional 25 years to life. After the sentencing, Davis spoke for about an hour, repeating his longstanding complaint that the police and the court system were engaged in a vendetta against him.
Representations on film
Larry Davis tells his story in a 2003 film. The film describes Davis as being "shot in the head at point blank range" by police during the raid; and how he "turned himself in to the FBI, in exchange for their guarantee to investigate the NYPD's involvement in drug deals that he was forced to participate in as a teenager."In July 2006, Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
magazine reported that Roc-A-Fella Records co-founder Damon Dash
Damon Dash
__NOINDEX__...
was planning a documentary on Davis.
The BET
Bet
Bet or BET may refer to:* A wager in gambling* Basic Economics Test * Bet , the second letter in many Semitic alphabets, including Aramaic, Hebrew, Phoenician and Syriac* Brunauer-Emmett-Teller isotherm. See BET_theory...
documentary series American Gangster
American Gangster
American Gangster is a 2007 American biographical crime film directed by Ridley Scott and written by Steve Zaillian. The film is based on the criminal career of Frank Lucas, a gangster from La Grange, North Carolina who smuggled heroin into the United States on American service planes returning...
did a profile on Larry Davis. Revealed in that episode was that Davis arranged to be interviewed by the show on the same day he died.
The second episode of the 2010 A&E
A&E Network
The A&E Network is a United States-based cable and satellite television network with headquarters in New York City and offices in Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, London, Los Angeles and Stamford. A&E also airs in Canada and Latin America. Initially named the Arts & Entertainment Network, A&E launched...
television series Fugitive Chronicles dramatizes the manhunt for Davis and features interviews with involved police officers.
The 1997 Sidney Lumet
Sidney Lumet
Sidney Lumet was an American director, producer and screenwriter with over 50 films to his credit. He was nominated for the Academy Award as Best Director for 12 Angry Men , Dog Day Afternoon , Network and The Verdict...
film Night Falls on Manhattan
Night Falls on Manhattan
Night Falls on Manhattan is a 1997 American crime drama film directed by Sidney Lumet, set and filmed on location in New York City. Its screenplay is by Lumet, based on a novel by author Robert Daley entitled: Tainted Evidence...
was inspired by Davis's 1986 shootout with the police.
Death
Davis was serving his sentence at Shawangunk Correctional FacilityShawangunk Correctional Facility
Shawangunk Correctional Facility is a maximum security prison for males located in Ulster County, New York in the United States.- History :The prison was constructed in 1983 to expand the maximum security capabilities of the state prison system and was located near the existing Wallkill...
near the Ulster County
Ulster County, New York
Ulster County is a county located in the state of New York, USA. It sits in the state's Mid-Hudson Region of the Hudson Valley. As of the 2010 census, the population was 182,493. Recent population estimates completed by the United States Census Bureau for the 12-month period ending July 1 are at...
hamlet of Wallkill
Wallkill, Ulster County, New York
Wallkill is a hamlet , generally identified as coterminous with ZIP code 12589, telephone exchange 895 in the 845 area code and most of the Wallkill Central School District located mostly in the eastern half of the Town of Shawangunk, Ulster County, New York but partly spilling over into adjacent...
. At 7 p.m. February 20, 2008, correctional officers overseeing one of the yards noticed inmates congregating around an apparent fight. When they went to break it up, they found Davis had been stabbed repeatedly with a nine-inch (23 cm) metal shank
Shiv (weapon)
A shiv is a slang term for any sharp or pointed implement used as a knife-like weapon. However, the word in practical usage is frequently used when referring to an improvised bladed weapon. Shivs are commonly made by inmates in prisons across the world...
. He was taken by ambulance
Ambulance
An ambulance is a vehicle for transportation of sick or injured people to, from or between places of treatment for an illness or injury, and in some instances will also provide out of hospital medical care to the patient...
to St. Luke's Hospital in nearby Newburgh
Newburgh (city), New York
Newburgh is a city located in Orange County, New York, United States, north of New York City, and south of Albany, on the Hudson River. Newburgh is a principal city of the Poughkeepsie-Newburgh-Middletown metropolitan area, which includes all of Dutchess and Orange counties. The Newburgh area was...
, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
After questioning by the state police
New York State Police
The New York State Police is the state police force of over 4,600 sworn Troopers for the state of New York. It was established on April 11, 1917 by the New York Legislature, in response to the 1913 murder of a construction foreman named Sam Howell in Westchester County, which at that time did not...
and the New York State Department of Correctional Services
New York State Department of Correctional Services
The New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision or NYSDOCCS is the agency of New York State responsible for the care, confinement, and rehabilitation of approximately 63,000 inmates at 71 correctional facilities funded by the State of New York. The department employs...
's (DOCS) inspector general
Inspector General
An Inspector General is an investigative official in a civil or military organization. The plural of the term is Inspectors General.-Bangladesh:...
's office, another inmate, Luis Rosado, 42, was charged with murder
Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
.
Rosado was already serving a sentence of 25 years to life
Life imprisonment
Life imprisonment is a sentence of imprisonment for a serious crime under which the convicted person is to remain in jail for the rest of his or her life...
for murder and assault charges in the early 1980s, and had been denied parole
Parole
Parole may have different meanings depending on the field and judiciary system. All of the meanings originated from the French parole . Following its use in late-resurrected Anglo-French chivalric practice, the term became associated with the release of prisoners based on prisoners giving their...
in 2007. He was arraigned at Shawangunk
Shawangunk, New York
Shawangunk is a town in southwestern Ulster County, New York, United States. The population was 12,022 at the 2000 census. Like the neighboring mountain range, for which it is named, it is pronounced either as the Munsee Lenape, Shawangunk , or as the colonial Shongum by local residents...
Town Court the next morning. DOCS officials said both he and Davis had long disciplinary records, including fights with other inmates, but there was no record of any previous violence between the two.
On July 31, 2008, an Ulster County grand jury
Grand jury
A grand jury is a type of jury that determines whether a criminal indictment will issue. Currently, only the United States retains grand juries, although some other common law jurisdictions formerly employed them, and most other jurisdictions employ some other type of preliminary hearing...
indicted
Indictment
An indictment , in the common-law legal system, is a formal accusation that a person has committed a crime. In jurisdictions that maintain the concept of felonies, the serious criminal offence is a felony; jurisdictions that lack the concept of felonies often use that of an indictable offence—an...
Rosado on nine felony
Felony
A felony is a serious crime in the common law countries. The term originates from English common law where felonies were originally crimes which involved the confiscation of a convicted person's land and goods; other crimes were called misdemeanors...
charges related to the stabbing, including three different counts of murder
Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
, assault
Assault
In law, assault is a crime causing a victim to fear violence. The term is often confused with battery, which involves physical contact. The specific meaning of assault varies between countries, but can refer to an act that causes another to apprehend immediate and personal violence, or in the more...
, 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
Clinton Correctional Facility
Clinton Correctional Facility is a New York State Department of Correctional Services state prison for men located in the Village of Dannemora, New York. The prison itself is sometimes colloquially referred to as Dannemora, although its actual name is derived from its location in Clinton County,...
, located in upstate New York close to the Canadian border. On Wednesday, February 25th, 2009, Luis Rosado pled guilty to first-degree manslaughter in Ulster County Court and was sentenced to an additional 10 years in prison that is to be served consecutively with his current 25 years to life sentence for murder.