‘His debt is paid.’ Portsmouth man fights for pardon of 80-year prison sentence.

Ronald Davis felt like he was being buried alive.

Barely 19, he spent the months during the spring and summer of 1998, in local courtrooms for sentencing hearings resulting from his involvement in a string of October 1997 armed robberies around Hampton Roads. No one had been injured, and Davis never held a gun.

Each sentencing felt like another shovel of dirt.

In Norfolk, he received 13 years. In Suffolk, 22. In Newport News, 30. In Isle of Wight, 15. Eight decades to serve.

Davis, now 42, has spent the last quarter-century at various Virginia prisons, including Buckingham Correctional Center, where he is now. He’s earned his GED and completed more than a dozen skills and rehabilitation courses.

And, for more than a decade, he’s worked to secure a pardon — his only hope for a shortened sentence, since Virginia abolished parole in 1995. Some people, including one of the prosecutors that sent him away, believe Davis doesn’t deserve the sentence he received.

But it’s been almost three years since Davis’ attorney submitted his pardon petition. With the state parole board under fire and notorious for operating outside of the public eye, updates on the petition are elusive. As Gov. Ralph Northam nears the end of his tenure, Davis believes his case is at a critical juncture — one that could be his last chance to see life outside prison walls.

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A ‘grossly excessive’ sentence

Joan Davis, Ronald’s mother, hasn’t seen her only son in about 18 years. She talks to him almost every day, and he sends her birthday and Christmas cards. She used to visit, but it became too difficult to see him locked up.

Even before he went to prison, she found it too painful to attend his court hearings.

“I could not bear to see him shackled,” she said in a recent interview.

Only after he’d been in prison for a few years did she find out just how long he had been sentenced. It took even longer to understand why.

A combination of mandatory minimum sentences for gun charges, along with robberies committed in four jurisdictions, compounded to create what Davis’ pardon petition would eventually refer to as a “grossly excessive” sentence.

Joan fell to her knees when the pieces came together.

When Ronald was 4, Joan’s grandmother died at their home. When Joan broke the news, he ran to his great-grandmother’s bed.

“Wake up!” he yelled through tears. Then, quietly, he lie down next to his grandmother, staying by her side as long as he could.

That was Davis’ personality. Equal parts tender, loving, active and playful.

He was a smart, busy child. In third grade, he was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder and hyperactivity, and was sent to an alternative school. He did well there, but he was bullied, and he bounced back and forth between his old and new schools for the rest of his education.

Davis’ family, especially his uncle Michael, offered guidance. Joan helped him see the best in himself when he struggled. He played recreational sports until he aged out.

During his senior year at I.C. Norcom High School, though, Davis turned to drugs and became addicted.

His mother didn’t know how bad things were until she received a call on Oct. 25, 1997, about a car crash.

When she saw the police officer outside Davis’ room at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, her heart sank.

The car Davis was in matched the description of one used in a convenience store robbery that night. Over the previous nine days, Davis and the rest of the group in the car had been involved in robberies at convenience stores and restaurants across four jurisdictions: Norfolk, Suffolk, Newport News and Isle of Wight County.

Davis approached store clerks and took money from cash registers. He was charged with eight counts of armed robbery, as well eight counts of use of a firearm. Under state law, he was held responsible for his accomplice holding the gun, which carried the same penalty as if he had done so himself.

Virginia law mandates a mandatory minimum sentence of three years for a first use of a firearm conviction, and a mandatory minimum sentence of five years for each subsequent conviction. The sentences are required to be served consecutively, not concurrently, with the sentences for the primary felony — in Davis’ case, the armed robbery charges.

Davis pleaded guilty to all charges except those in Suffolk, where he originally faced a charge for abducting the victim of the robbery. He believed he was innocent, and the court agreed. He still faced two armed robbery and two use of a firearm charges in the jurisdiction, of which he was found guilty.

Because the crimes took place in four jurisdictions, he faced sentencing hearings in each — a fact that became central to Davis’ pardon petition, filed in 2019.

Under the state’s sentencing guidelines, any prior felony conviction padded the suggested sentence for subsequent convictions. Because Davis was sentenced four times, each conviction he received in one jurisdiction increased the suggested sentence in the following jurisdiction. Had he been sentenced in one jurisdiction for the exact same crimes, the petition argues, his sentence would have been much lower.

The petition also argues that Davis’ sentencing amounted “to a form of double counting” — that is, the use of a firearm was counted twice: once for each armed robbery charge, which carries a harsher sentence than a non-armed robbery, and again for each use of a firearm charge.

“A defendant convicted of armed robbery, as Davis was, already has his sentencing range adjusted for the use of a firearm without regard to the separate, mandatory sentence he must receive for the separate firearms offense,” the petition reads.

While the gun charges carry mandatory minimum sentences, the petition argues that a judge could have suspended the sentences for the armed robbery charges, leaving Davis with 38 years for the gun charges.

In the petition, Davis’ attorney, Jonathan Shapiro, acknowledges that Davis’ sentence was legal, but that it was nonetheless “numbing, irrational and counterproductive.”

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Starting the long road to a pardon

Davis said he was numb for the first few years of his sentence. He watched as the sentences of other prisoners ended, and they left.

I’m never going home, he remembers thinking.

He focused on what he could do to better himself. He settled into a routine: Wake up at 6 a.m., pray, drink coffee, work out, watch the news, read, talk on the phone with family, repeat. He earned his GED in 2007, trained in custodial maintenance and sanitation and construction safety and health, and completed courses in social support, relapse prevention and counseling training, among other topics.

In 2007, during one of his calls home, he spoke to a cousin in graduate school at Old Dominion University. She was taking a law class and thought his case could qualify for a pardon.

Pardons are available to currently and previously incarcerated individuals with “exceptional circumstances who have demonstrated rehabilitation,” according to the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s office. The state parole board, operated by five members appointed by the governor, oversees the pardon process. The board is largely exempt from state public records law and has been characterized as operating entirely outside of public view.

Davis first applied for a pardon in 2013. Former Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican, denied his petition after six months, Davis said. Research shows that Republican officials, specifically presidents, are less likely to grant pardons than Democrats. Former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, granted 227 pardons during his term — three times more than McDonnell.

Once a pardon is denied, the petitioner must wait three years to apply again. In 2017, Davis began the process again, more determined than before.

He contacted lawyers who might represent him and elected officials who might advocate for him.

Shapiro remembers a letter from Davis in 2017. He receives lots of letters with similar requests from incarcerated people, he said, but with the “extraordinary circumstances” of Davis’ case, he got “sucked in” immediately.

Shapiro and a team of law students at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, where he is a professor, worked with Davis to gather details of the case and put together a new petition. It includes supporting letters from his family, elected leaders and even the prosecutor from Davis’ sentencing hearing in Newport News.

The now-former prosecutor, Matt Danielson, argued in Davis’ original sentencing hearing for the judge to give a lesser sentence than the state’s guidelines suggested, citing the fact that Davis never held the gun in the robberies and that he was facing sentences in other jurisdictions.

But the judge refused.

“There are no freebies,” the judge said, according to court transcripts. “You commit a crime in Newport News, you pull time for it. The fact that you committed crimes in other jurisdictions, you need to pay for those equally.”

Danielson said he believes now and believed then the sentence in Newport News was too harsh.

“He’s been in prison now for 25 years,” he said in a recent interview. “I don’t understand how the citizens of the Commonwealth are somehow safer because he spends another five years or another 10 years, or another day.”

The petition demonstrates that Davis has made strides towards rehabilitation, considering the many courses he has taken over the past two decades and that he has “long-since recovered” from his drug addiction. The petition also lists Davis’ hopes for the future: That he will secure work as a paralegal, with the dream of helping people in situations similar to his. He is already taking courses to earn his paralegal certification.

“The impaired boy who committed these crimes all those years ago has proven he is worthy of a second chance,” the petition reads.

“His debt is paid.”

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Waiting for an answer

Davis’ petition includes five examples of pardons that have been granted in similar cases, including one for Travion Blount. As a teenager in 2008, Blount was sentenced to six life sentences plus 119 years for multiple armed robbery and use of firearm charges. McAuliffe granted Blount’s pardon in 2018, reducing his sentence to 14 years.

According to the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s office, there is “no reliable method of predicting how long a pardon petition will take to complete,” and the investigation process could take two years or longer.

The state Pardons Office denied a request for information about the status of Davis’ petition, citing the “working papers” exemption to Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act. The exemption allows public officials, including the governor, to refuse to release any records “prepared by or for a public official … for his personal or deliberative use.”

The Pilot also requested an update about Davis’ petition from Northam, who will make the decision if he receives a recommendation from the parole board before his term ends and chooses to act.

Spokeswoman Alena Yarmosky said she could not provide updates on specific petitions, but said the governor “believes firmly in using his clemency powers to right wrongs and provide second chances.” Yarmosky said Northam so far has granted 604 pardons during his term — more than the previous nine governors combined.

Davis respects the process and knew it would take a long time, but says that doesn’t make the waiting period easier.

In the almost three years since the petition was submitted, Davis, his family and community organizers have continued to bring awareness to his case. An online petition advocating for Davis’ release has received more than 7,200 signatures. This year, Davis organized rallies in Portsmouth and Hampton.

The rallies brought Joan Davis a sense of support that she hadn’t felt for many years.

“I felt like I wasn’t alone anymore,” she said.

The Davis family gathers often in Churchland, where many live, for cookouts. Sometimes, when Davis calls at the right time, they put him on speaker phone and gather around to talk with him.

Someday soon, Davis might be able to attend a cookout. Maybe he’ll get married and give Joan the grandchildren she’s always wanted.

But until then, Ronald Davis waits.

Korie Dean, 757-446-2962, korie.dean@virginiamedia.com