Legal proceedings against Arthur Davies, whose actions nearly seven years ago were a causal or heedless factor in the death of his then-girlfriend’s 17-month-old son, will likely draw to a close later this month, three months after Davies’ conviction on involuntary manslaughter and abuse of a child resulting in death charges in November.
There remains a slight but unrealistic chance the judge who heard the case against him that ended in a conviction will grant Davies’ defense lawyer’s motion for a third trial on grounds of juror misconduct. Thereafter, Davies’ hope of walking free once more any time before he is an elderly man will hinge on his lawyer’s contention that there was judicial error when the court allowed the prosecution, which had failed to obtain a premeditated degree murder conviction against him in 2023 and then went after him on an unpremeditated murder charge in his second trial last year, to reduce the charge mid-trial to manslaughter.
Davies in 2023 was found not guilty of first degree murder in the February 12, 2018 death of Parker Schumacher, who died from blunt-force trauma to the head. The same jury was unable to reach a verdict on charges of second-degree murder and assault.
At his second trial held last year, Jury selection began on October 7, continuing on October 8, 9 10 and 14, 15 and 16, with Tsuei beginning the presentation of its case, evidence and witnesses on October 22 and continuing on October 23, 24, 28, and 29, at which point the prosecution rested. Beginning on October 31, Ali initiated his defense, continuing with the presentation of witnesses and evidence on November 4 and 6, at which point the defense rested. The jury began deliberations on November 12, and continued to deliberate on November 13, 14 and 19. On November 19, the voluntary manslaughter charge was amended to involuntary manslaughter. Thereupon, the jury found Davies guilty of involuntary manslaughter and assault on a child causing death, both felonies.
Davies’ attorney, Zulu Ali, has pursued a vigorous defense of this client the entire way and is yet gunning to have the conviction dismissed, another jury impaneled and to try the case once more. Ali is up against an equally determined prosecutor, Deputy District Attorney Charles Tsuei, who made more than one misstep in his prosecution of Davies but persisted in getting the convictions on less serious charges. Tshei is seeking to counter Ali at every turn.
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 initial 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.
In the first trial, presided over by Judge Pallone, 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.
In his capacity as defense attorney, 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 had been in continuous custody from shortly after the child’s death, was still in custody six-and-a-half years later, as his second trial approached. 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 was purposed 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 Ali’s statements, the defense attorney’s theory of third-party culpability comes down to an act of negligence on Caccavari’s part relating to young Schumacher’s January 21, 2017 fall from the couch. In seeking to prepare his case for the second trial, Ali encountered stiff opposition from Tsuei, who argued that blaming Caccavari for the child’s death was improper. Tsuei’s assertion in this regard was more or less accepted as valid by Judge Pallone. Efforts to free Davies during the trial were rebuffed, and Ali was forced to put on a defense in the second trial, which took place not before Judge Pallone but in the courtroom of Judge Rasheed Alexander. In the second trial, Ali was unable to follow a strategy he had formulated in preparing for a second go-round in front of a jury. The lawyer was hamstrung in that he had to put on a defense he felt was minus its most convincing components. Davies remained incarcerated throughout the trail.
Jury selection began on October 7, continuing on October 8, 9, 10 and 14, 15 and 16, with Tsuei beginning the presentation of its case, evidence and witnesses on October 22. Having continuously committed to the scenario of deliberate murder of the child by Davies in the first trial, Tsuei had switched to 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.
Tsuei continued to propound his narrative, backed by his presentation of witnesses and evidence, on October 23, 24, 28, and 29, at which point the prosecution rested. Beginning on October 31, Ali initiated his defense, continuing with the presentation of witnesses and evidence on November 4 and 6, crippled in the respect that he was unable to make the showing of an alternative explanation of the manner in which Parker had been injured. The defense rested on November 6.
The jury began deliberations on November 12, and continued to deliberate on November 13, 14 and 19. On November 19, after communication from the jury indicating another deadlock with regard to the 2nd degree murder charge, a somewhat unconventional “interlineation” amendment of the 2nd degree murder charge to involuntary manslaughter was consented to by the court. Thereupon, the jury found Davies guilty of involuntary manslaughter and assault on a child causing death, both felonies.
Following the trial, Ali sought to have the conviction vacated, arguing that there were multiple instances of juror misconduct during the trial and that the guilty verdict on involuntary manslaughter, which carries a maximum sentence of four years in prison and intentional assault upon a child resulting in death, which involves a mandatory 25 years to life sentence, are incompatible.
After Tsuei maintained that case law establishes the intentional assault and involuntary manslaughter convictions are not contradictory, Judge Alexander found in favor of the prosecution. The jury’s conclusion that “something violent happened [and] it wasn’t an accident” was logically derived, Judge Alexander said. Moreover, the jury could not be faulted for concluding that “the only person who could have done it was Mr. Davies… based on the direct and circumstantial evidence,” the judge said.
Ali asserted, as well, that a defendant cannot under the terms of California law be convicted of negligent assault on a child causing death if the defendant does not have “care or custody” of the child. The child was in his mother’s care, Ali argued.
“There’s absolutely no evidence that Mr. Davies had consented or taken responsibility for watching Parker,” according to Ali.
Judge Alexander rejected Ali’s reasoning and he also went along with Tsuei on most, but not yet all, of the juror misconduct allegations, finding that even if one such accusation was true, it likely did not impact the verdicts.