“SLIM” LEMARICUS DAVIDSON (SENTENCED TO DEATH ON OCTOBER 30, 2009)

            Lemaricus Davidson A.K.A Slim, was the ringleader of the five gang members who murdered Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom, was sentenced to death on this date, October 30, 2009. I will post the latest news on him.

Lemaricus Davidson

INTERNET SOURCE: http://www.knoxnews.com/news/breaking-news/appellate-court-upholds-death-sentence-for-lemaricus-davidson-in-torture-killings_43054906

Appellate court upholds death sentence for Lemaricus Davidson in torture killings

Jamie Satterfield

8:13 PM, Mar 10, 2015

8:36 PM, Mar 10, 2015

A state appeals court late Tuesday issued an opinion upholding the conviction and death sentence for the ringleader in one of Knoxville’s most notorious crimes.

The Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals in a 91-page opinion rejected every argument advanced by Lemaricus Davidson, who was sentenced to die in the January 2007 torture killings of Channon Christian, 21, and Christopher Newsom, 23.

Davidson was tried in October 2009. Trial testimony showed Davidson orchestrated the initial carjacking of the couple, who were held captive at Davidson’s Chipman Street house before their deaths, and DNA evidence linked him to repeated rapes of Christian. Of the four defendants charged and convicted in the case, Davidson was the only one to receive a death sentence.

The appellate court, in the opinion authored by Judge James Curwood Witt Jr., ruled there was ample evidence to support all of Davidson’s myriad convictions for the carjacking, kidnapping, rape and slayings of the couple. The court rejected claims by Davidson’s defense team of bad rulings before trial, legal mistakes during the trial and constitutional issues involving the law itself.

The court also affirmed a jury’s decision to order Davidson put to death for his crimes. In so doing, the court noted the Knox County jury was instructed to make its decision based not on emotion but on the weighing of listed aggravating factors and mitigating factors. The jury, the court said, concluded the aggravated factors outweighed those mitigating factors — with good cause.

“The evidence established that (Newsom) was forced to walk barefoot over gravel, half naked, to the railroad tracks where he suffered three gunshot wounds,” Witt wrote. “(Christian) was kept alive inside the Chipman Street residence and repeatedly sexually assaulted and beaten before she was stuffed alive into five trash bags and then a trash can. There, she suffocated to death, even after, according to (Davidson’s) own statement to the police, she asked not to die.

“Proof of the aggravated circumstances in this case was simply overwhelming.”

More details as they develop online and in Wednesday’s News Sentinel.