Joshua Davis is led into the courtroom yesterday for his sentencing for molesting and killing his 8-year-old neighbor in Woonsocket, Savannah Smith. The victim’s father says, “This is justice. It keeps a killer off the streets.”

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The Providence Journal / Kathy Borchers

While in prison awaiting trial on charges that he raped and killed an 8-year-old girl, Joshua Davis penned a letter in which he described catching a mermaid and taking her for a cruise in his boat. “I decided I couldn’t let her leave, because if she swam back, the sharks would be looking for me,” he wrote, “so I enjoyed my catch.”

Assistant Attorney General Bethany Macktaz said yesterday that Davis was really talking about the warm spring day in 2006 when he took Savannah Smith for a ride in his red convertible from her Woonsocket neighborhood to a wooded area in Cranston where he molested her and then strangled her, leaving her bruised body under a tree.

That letter, she told Superior Court Judge Gilbert V. Indeglia, is proof that Davis had no potential for rehabilitation.

“To rehabilitate a soul,” she said, “there has to be one there to begin with.”

Judge Indeglia agreed, sentencing Davis, 23, to life without parole for first-degree murder, and life imprisonment for child molestation and also for kidnapping a minor. He pleaded guilty to those charges in April.

He is the 28th criminal to receive the maximum sentence allowable under state law enacted in 1984. It’s the state’s first life-without-parole sentence in a case involving the molestation and murder of a child and also the first in which the defendant admitted guilt rather than going to trial.

Of all the life sentences, none was for a crime “more cruel, heartless, savage or vicious as what this defendant did to this child,” Indeglia said. “I find the possibility of rehabilitation [for Davis] very unlikely.”

As soon as Indeglia concluded, applause broke out in the crowded courtroom. Savannah’s family lingered long after the judge left the bench, hugging and crying.

During the hearing, which lasted nearly five hours, Davis remained unexpressive. Dressed in a white dress shirt and dark slacks, he sat quietly as Samantha’s mother and father both spoke tearfully of their loss.

“He took away what I created and he had no right,” Lisa Smith said. “I loathe him. He is the lowest piece of scum on this earth.”

Davis’ attorney, John J. Hardiman, a public defender, argued for a lenient sentence, one that allowed parole.

Hardiman said that Davis “wasn’t himself” on the day of the murder. He drank 24 beers, smoked two marijuana joints and some crack cocaine.

Hardiman said Davis had grown up never knowing his father and being sexually abused by one of his mother’s boyfriends. As a teenager, he said, Davis was depressed, once drinking antifreeze in an attempt to kill himself. He started drinking at age 12; smoking marijuana at 13.

But since he has been imprisoned, Davis has been on a strict regimen of anti-psychotic medication and no longer uses illegal drugs. He has earned his high school equivalency diploma and he is still close with his two children, Hardiman said.

Davis, who has added bulk to his formerly lanky frame, spoke in a fast but assured voice, saying he was “deeply, sincerely sorry” for his “despicable acts.”

He said he pleaded guilty against the advice of his lawyer in order to “spare the family the trauma” of a trial.

Arguing for life without parole, Macktaz said Davis has been “planting the seeds of remorse” since he was arrested, but there was another side of him. “Don’t be fooled,” she told Indeglia.

Macktaz quoted from letters, intercepted by ACI investigators, that Davis wrote to family, friends and other inmates.

In one letter, Davis conspired with another inmate to burn down the attorney general’s office. They plotted to somehow discredit the office and expose its “illegal tactics” with what Davis called the “scam of the century.”

In a letter to his mother a month after his arrest, he said that he was going to have Savannah’s parents killed.

“I could have a .45 caliber slug in each of their heads,” he wrote. “I don’t care if the rest of that family dies a worse death than that girl.”

The hearing opened with testimony from Dr. Peter A. Gillespie of the state medical examiner’s office followed by an account by Macktaz of the crime and how Davis tried to cover it up. Both provided details of the crime never before disclosed.

On Sunday afternoon, May 8, 2006, Savannah, her sister Danielle and their cousin Brianna helped Davis wash his convertible outside his home across the street from the Smith house on Coe Street.

The other two girls never got into the car with Davis, but Savannah did later that afternoon. He took her to a secluded area off Parkview Boulevard in Cranston, where he beat her and raped her before strangling her to death.

Davis dragged her body from the spot where he killed her to a tree about 50 feet away. Grabbing a discarded rug, he covered her body. He tossed her clothes, which were immaculately clean. Savannah’s shorts were found on a tree branch; her underwear and purple tank top on the ground.

The police found Savannah’s naked body several hours later.

Gillespie testified that many of Savannah’s injuries had been inflicted while she was alive. There was evidence that she had suffered a brain hemorrhage after being struck on the head and there were the tell-tale marks of strangulation on her neck.

Cuts and bruises on her legs showed that the 4-foot-3, 42-pound child tried to fight off her captor.

A used condom, with Davis’ semen and Savannah’s blood, was found at the scene.

The medical examiner concluded that Savannah died of multiple blunt force trauma to the head and strangulation.

Afterward, Macktaz said that Davis drove to his grandfather’s house in Warwick where he scrubbed his hands clean of Savannah’s blood and changed his shirt. He then drove to a friend’s house in the city and had a beer and a cigarette.

When considering the sentence, Indeglia said he took into account that Davis had cooperated with the police, took responsibility for his actions by pleading guilty, had no prior criminal record as an adult, and appeared to have the support of his family.

According to Indeglia, Davis’ mother and stepfather sent letters to the court saying that they believed Davis should have a chance at parole, on account of his age and the fact that he had done good things in his life.

But Indeglia rejected that plea. He said there was a “distinct possibility” that Davis could harm others if released from prison. “This is a mean person,” he said. “I agree with [Macktaz] that there first must be a soul to rehabilitate and here there is no soul.”

As Savannah’s family found some solace in the tough sentence, Davis stole a glance toward his relatives. His mother dabbed tears from her eyes as he was taken away in shackles.

David Smith made his way out of the courthouse carrying a large poster-sized portrait of his daughter that had been displayed in the courtroom by the attorney general’s office. He said he was satisfied with the sentence.

“This is justice,” Smith said. “It keeps a killer off the streets.”

pmarcelo@projo.com