In an effort to prevent delays in closure for the Schumacher and Caccavari families, Superior Court Judge Rasheed Alexander has sentenced Arthur Davies to 25-years-to-life following his November conviction for involuntary manslaughter and related assault resulting in the death of a child in the February 2018 death of 17-month old Parker Schumacher.
Judge Alexander’s sentencing telegraphs that he is primed to reject a yet-pending motion by Davies’ attorney, Zulu Ali, that his client be granted a new trial because of juror misconduct.
Any prospect that the 41-year-old Davies will take up residence outside of a penal institution now hinges on efforts Ali or Davies’ appellate attorney can make to convince California Fourth Appellate District in Riverside that the judge who heard pretrial motions before Judge Alexander officiated over the trial wrongfully excluded evidence and testimony Ali believes might have exonerated Davies at trial. In addition, Ali is gravitating toward exploiting another facet of the actual trial he contends put Davies at an unfair disadvantage with the jury. Under this theory, Judge Alexander wrongfully permitted the prosecution to shop around for charges to apply against the defendant. Judge Alexander allowed the prosecution to present a case during Davies second trial that alleged the defendant had willfully but without premeditation murdered the child but then allowed that theory to be withdrawn, and let the allegation of guilt transition into involuntary manslaughter just before the matter went to the jury.
In Davies’ first trial in 2023, the jury unanimously found him not guilty on a first degree murder charge, rejecting Deputy District Attorney Charles Tsuei’s unrelenting insistence that Davies had premeditatively murdered the child. In Davies’s second trial in October and November 2024 before another jury, Tsuei was equally adamant throughout the presentation of evidence and testimony that Davis was guilty of second degree murder, arguing that he had not planned to kill the toddler but had beaten him to death in a fit of rage. At the last minute, prior to the jury beginning its deliberations, Tsuei asked Judge Alexander to let him substitute the charge of unintentional murder – involuntary manslaughter – for the accusation that Davis had deliberately murdered the child without planning to do so in advance. Judge Alexander granted Tsuei’s charge substitution motion.
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 with 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 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 Christopher Pallone, there was conflicting expert testimony about the extent and nature of the child’s injuries. 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 intellectual 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, 2024, 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 trial.
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  and planned 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.
Ali has plenty of issues to pursue an appeal.
That he was foreclosed from appealing to the jury to consider that some party other than Davies critically injured young Schumacher and any evidence to that effect is a matter that will very likely be taken up with California’s 4th District Court of Appeal in Riverside.
Ali can also test with the 4th District whether the prosecution took too many bites at the apple when it alleged Davies had deliberately and premeditatively murdered the child with malice aforethought, backed up regrouped after that did not work and alleged during a second trying of fact that Davies had killed Shumacher in the heat of passion before disposing of that theory mid-trial and offering jurors the lesser option of unintentional manslaughter.
Ali attempted, unsuccessfully, to convince Judge Alexander that the verdict was tainted by the action of a woman on the jury who during deliberations took it upon herself to engage in independent research, using the internet while she was at home, to look into issues she believed might bear upon Davies’ guilt or innocence. She shared some of that information with other members of the panel.
Judge Alexander said whatever prejudice against Davies that incident represented was cured when the woman was bounced off the jury and replaced with an alternate before a verdict was rendered.
In another example of the jury having not adhered to the proper protocol, according to Ali, a man on the jury discussed the case with his brother prior to the jury reaching its verdict. The brother with whom the juror allegedly discussed the case was employed by one of Davies’ family members, according to information that was disclosed publicly.
Reportedly, the juror denies having had the discussion in question with his brother. His brother contradicts.
Apparently, Judge Alexander does not feel that the discussion between the brothers rises to a level of impropriety or juror misconduct that would invalidate the verdict.
Ali disagrees, and a legal challenge of the verdict, together with a request for a new trial is, the Sentinel is told, in the works.
-Mark Gutglueck