He was convicted of robbing, kidnapping, sodomizing and sexually abusing a woman he didn’t know btw, and her excuse for halving the sentence was “he fell through the cracks [as a black man] in this society.”
“Off the record, the defendant was speaking to Ms. Zgonjanin [the victim] and stated, ‘I will see you in 20 years, b****,’” Judge Davis read aloud. “On the record, in front of the entire court, he stated, ‘D**** s*****, f**** y’all kids, and f**** y’all’s dead loved ones.’ In addition to that, speaking directly to the court, he said, ‘Eat my d****, b****. I’m going to pop your *** and s*** my d***, b****.’”
Additionally, below is the exchange that preceded Judge Davis’s decision to forgo the jury’s recommended sentence in favor of a lighter sentence (mind you he was telling the court this while she was actively handing out the sentence):
Thompson: “I don’t have sympathy for nobody.”
Judge Davis: “If you come in here and you show the court –"
Thompson: “I don’t have sympathy for you, the victim, the victim’s family.”
Judge Davis: “We don’t need your sympathy.”
Thompson: “I don’t care.”
Judge Davis: “That’s fine.”
This particular judge also has an incredible history lmao
In 2019, Davis was charged with a felony for “making a false statement to receive benefits,” when she applied for food stamps and Medicaid, according to court records. The records say her statement allowed her to receive a combined $15,909 in overpayments.
On Sept. 2, 2019, records show she was charged with reckless driving and driving under the influence – at 6:59 in the morning − after a deputy sheriff saw her “swerving all over the road” and “crossing all lanes” on Interstate 71.
She failed three field sobriety tests given to her by a Louisville Metro Police officer, according to her citation.
Davis was also sued in 2019 by a woman who provided management services for her unsuccessful 2018 campaign for district court and who alleged she failed to pay a $22,000 bill. When the sheriff’s office attempted to serve her with the suit six times at her home, Davis avoided service each time, according to court records.
Steavon Deonna Stokes, the plaintiff, eventually won a default judgment against Davis, which she appealed, saying she had never been served with the lawsuit.
In a 2021 unanimous decision, the Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment against Davis.
But wait. It gets even better.
The central factor in Judge Tracy E. Davis’s victory was the vulnerability of the incumbent, Judge Mary Shaw, the only sitting circuit judge in Jefferson County to face a challenger in the election. Shaw had signed the warrant that led to the 2020 police search of Breonna Taylor’s home, during which Taylor was fatally shot by a detective after her boyfriend, believing the couple was being robbed, fired a single shot that struck a detective in the leg.
In 2011, my papa was laid off from a Whirlpool manufacturing plant, the kind that had for so long made America great. In the wake of the financial crisis, the C-suite had decided to offshore operations to Mexico.
The plant they shuttered was a 1.2 million sq ft manufacturing plant, and overnight, 1,000 people lost their jobs. Many of whom had been working there for decades.
My papa was 57 years old when he got laid off. He had worked at that very same plant for over 30 years, and snap just like that, it was all gone.
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When I was a little girl, from as far back as I could remember, my papa woke up at 3:30 am and drove the 40 minutes to the plant from the rural 1,200-person town every single day. And for 30 years, he worked what were often 10-12 hour shifts with no complaints.
I grew up a Navy brat, so I didn’t get to see my grandparents except for a few months during the summer, but I remember my papa exerting the last drop of his energy so he could spend time with us going to the creek, building us a tree house, riding horses, and playing cowboys and Indians.
Every evening, starting from when I was in grade school, my papa and I would sit in the living room and watch the History Channel, Animal Planet, and Bill O’Reilly and hee-haw together about what the Democrats were doing, as much as an eight-year-old can.
My papa and my nana had been together since they graduated high school; they got married at barely 18 and had my mom less than a year later and my aunt soon after that.
They had a small homestead, owned most of what they had outright, and they were poor, but poor doesn’t have to mean that much when you can work the land.
My nana worked as the local school’s secretary, and my papa had good benefits with his manufacturing job. They only ever went out to eat on special occasions. McDonald’s was a birthday-only type of affair. They had a one-acre garden, a few head of cattle, would can fruits and vegetables at the end of every summer, and freeze chopped okra, blueberries, meat from wild hogs and venison in an old chest freezer in the workshop.
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Despite never having been on a plane and seldom ever having been outside of Arkansas, they managed to put both my mom and aunt through college and graduate school without requiring them to incur even a dime of debt. This was the 1990s.
Then at the age of 57, my papa and 1,000 of his coworkers were thrown away like a piece of trash after giving that company decades of their lives. And what were they told to do? What was their consolation prize?
Learn. To. Code.
My papa and nana were born in the 1950s in a place that was quite literally the Wild West just mere decades before their birth.
Growing up, neither of them had running water—they drew water from a well, washed up in a tin tub heated over a fire, and went to the restroom in an outhouse. They were both educated in a one-room schoolhouse and both came from families that relied on their farm’s livestock to feed themselves. People like my grandparents built this nation. They built this nation for their children.
But because the thing they sought to build wasn’t a stock portfolio or real estate portfolio, the preservation of their homes and communities was not something that Wall Street nor Washington saw as having enough value to be anything more than apathetic about blowing up.
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