Thirteen months after he was acquitted of first-degree murder in the 2018 killing of his one-time girlfriend’s son, Arthur Thomas Davies next week will again stand trial on the second-degree murder and assault charges which the same jury was unable to reach a verdict on.
Davies, who has been in continuous custody since the February 2018 death of 17-month-old Parker Lee Schumacher, was acquitted in September 2023 of first-degree murder charges after a trial in which Deputy District Attorney Charles Tsuei consistently and repeatedly asserted Davies had deliberately killed the child.
The jury split on the alternate charges that were at play in the trial presided over by Judge Christopher Pallone, those being a 10-to-2 finding in favor of second-degree murder and an identical 10-to-2 vote determination of a fatal assault on a juvenile.
Judge Pallone declared the now-concluded proceedings to have been a mistrial and set a retrial for last October. That schedule was not met, but Davies, his defense attorney, Zulu Ali, and the prosecutor Tsuei, who remains as the prosecutor on the case will try the facts before a jury, beginning with the selection of that jury to begin on October 7.
Young Schumacher died in February 2018 after being severely injured inside a trailer in Yucca Valley, where he was living with his mother, Karissa Caccavari, and Davies.
In Tsuei’s narrative, Davies cruelly and deliberately slammed the back of the child’s head against a hard surface, most likely the top of a counter. The prosecutor presented testimony and contestable evidence to suggest that Davies resented the child because his presence, first in the home where Caccavari previously lived with Parker’s father, Eric Schumacher, and then later in a trailer in Yucca Valley, interfered and interrupted his relationship with Caccavari .
Davies met Caccavari in December 2017. After Caccavari and her child relocated from Joshua Tree to a trailer in Yucca Valley in January 2018, Davies moved in with them. Text messages presented during the course of the 2023 trial demonstrated that Davies was disapproving of Parker’s behavior and his mother’s indulgence of the child, who was not yet a year-and-a-half old. Disagreements between Davies and Caccavari, essentially over the child, including Davies’ contention that Parker was “manipulating” his mother, led to Caccavari and Davies parting as a couple, with Davies moving out of the trailer.
Davies, however, was involved in a single vehicle mishap on the evening/early morning of February 7/February 8, 2018. Instead of Davies moving back to his parents’ house as he had been purposed to do, he resumed residing in the trailer, as Caccavari, seemingly concerned about Davies after the accident, fatefully consented to him returning.
While Caccavari was not at the trailer on February 10 and Davies was there alone with the child, Parker suffered severe head trauma. Davies contacted Caccavari to inform her of the child’s injury and after Caccavari returned, the child was taken by ambulance to the Hi-Desert Medical Center in Joshua Tree and then flown to Loma Linda University Medical Center. There, physicians determined that the child had multiple injuries, including compound fractures to the back of his skull, extensive bleeding in the brain, swelling on one side of the brain and hemorrhaging in both eyes.
The child, who was having difficulty breathing, was placed on a ventilator. He died on February 11, 2018.
The medical professionals at Loma Linda contacted authorities, believing that the child’s injuries were not from a simple fall.
An autopsy determined that Parker had a previous fracture to his skull. It is surmised that this occurred on January 21, when the child fell off a couch and was observed vomiting. Caccavari took him to the Hi-Desert Medical Center after that incident but medical staff there did not do a head or brain scan at that time because it was determined the child had the flu, which was treated.
There was conflicting expert testimony about the extent and nature of the child’s injuries at trial. The plausibility/implausibility of that testimony appears to have created a circumstance which resulted in lingering doubt that resulted in an acquittal on the first-degree murder charge and made it impossible for the jury to reach a consensus on the remaining charges.
Tsuei in making his case relied heavily upon the testimony of Dr. Melissa Egge, a forensic pediatrician. Egge contradicted and sought to dismiss the accuracy of Davies’ account that Schumacher was injured when he launched himself from Davies’ arms while the adult was holding him, hitting his head on the trailer’s linoleum floor.
Defense attorney Zulu Ali ridiculed Egge’s contention that a baby or toddler could fall from the height of a two-story window on its head and not be injured as Parker was injured.
Ali seriously wounded Egge’s credibility as well by attempting to lead the jury to the conclusion that she had committed perjury when she claimed to have done extensive examination of child injuries relating to a child falling out of an adult’s grasp.
For his part, Tsuei sought to impeach Ali’s expert witness, Dr. Marvin Petruszka. The prosecutor first implied and then outright stated that Petruszka’s testimony was purchased for the price of $7,500. Petruszka was incompetent, Tsuei said, being unable to distinguish between the front and back of the child’s skull in photos and x-ray depictions of the injuries. Petruszka’s intellectually dishonesty was established by his unwillingness to entertain the most logical scientific conclusions about what had caused Schumacher’s death, according to Tsuei.
Ali argued that there was no testimony or evidence to indicate Davies was abusive and that, indeed, the opposite was the case, in that Davies, who was 34 at the time of Schumacher’s death, had been involved with a woman with children from a previous relationship and that Davies had not been abusive toward those children.
Ali successfully convinced all members of the jury that Davies had not premeditated the killing of young Schumacher. He also convinced two of the members of the jury that Davies had neither willfully nor negligently injured Parker.
Tsuei at one point engaged in a round of hyperbole he might have later regretted when he told the jury that Ali was arguing that Parker Schumacher had killed himself. Ali pointedly contested that when Judge Pallone acceded to a request by the still-deliberating jury to allow the prosecutor and defense attorney to restate and embellish on their closing arguments.
Davies, who has been in custody for more than seven-and-a-half years, remains incarcerated.
Tsuei, who has continuously committed to the scenario of deliberate murder of the child by Davies, is now seeking second-degree murder and assault of a minor convictions against the defendant, maintaining, essentially, that there was no premeditation on Davies’ part but that he killed Parker in a momentary fit of anger, resentment and desperation.
In pretrial motions heard by Judge Pallone on September 25, Ali and Tsuei haggled over what evidence should be deemed admissible in the new trial.
Ali, it appeared, was purposed, until he encountered stiff opposition from Tsuei which was more or less accepted as valid by Judge Pallone, to argue that there was a “third-party culpability” issue in the case and that he wanted evidence to that effect to be considered by the jury. Extrapolating upon Zulu’s statements, the defense attorney’s theory of third-party culpability comes down to an acto of negigence on Caccavari’s part relating to young Schumacher’s January 21, 2017 fall from the couch.
Judge Pallone did not seem convinced that the fall from the couch was in any way relevant to the child’s death. It is Zulu’s contention that the injury Parker suffered from that fall represented a preexisting condition that may have been a contributory fact in the child’s death. Zulu further believes that if he is allowed to question Caccavari about the fall from the couch, he may be able to impeach her credibility and thus undercut the that portion of the prosecution’s case that will rely on her testimony.
It has not been determined affirmatively whether Judge Pallone will permit the issue of preexisting conditions to be litigated at trial.