Jurors choose death penalty for toddler killer
Jurors Thursday chose death as punishment for a remorseless Bethany man who fatally beat his exgirlfriend’s 2-year-old son while babysitting in 2015.
The Oklahoma County jurors reached their decision in only one hour.
Dustin Melvin Davison, 25, showed no reaction as District Judge Cindy Truong announced the verdict. Davison hung his head as deputies handcuffed him and escorted him from the courtroom.
Afterward, relatives of the victim, Kreedin Paul Brooks, cried and embraced outside the courtroom. With tears in her eyes, the child’s mother, Jennifer Young, also gave long hugs to the prosecutors.
“It’s just a tragic, tragic case. This child suffered an indescribably painful and horrific death. And justice was done today,” Assistant District Attorney Gayland Gieger told The Oklahoman.
Gieger said Davison has shown no remorse.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that the jury made note of that and that factored into their decision,” the prosecutor said.
Jurors also learned that Davison, while in jail awaiting trial, had the victim’s name and the word “autopsy” tattooed on his right arm.
On Monday, the jury found Davison guilty of first-degree murder in the fatal beating. On Thursday, jurors chose the death sentence on grounds that the murder was especially heinous, atrocious or cruel, and that Davison would be a continuing threat to society.
“On May 18, 2015, Dustin Davison made the choice to brutally beat a 2-year-old child to death,” Assistant District Attorney Kelly Collins told the jury during closing arguments Thursday.
Collins then said she’ll never know how many times Davison punched or beat the boy that day.
“But what we do know is the extent of Kreedin Brooks’ injuries,” the prosecutor said.
The child had a skull fracture, brain bleeding, a broken jawbone and 49 bruises below the neck.
After his arrest, Davison gave a dozen different accounts to investigators of how the child became injured in his care. Jurors were shown those recorded interrogations during the trial.
In one story, he said the boy was injured during a pillow fight. In another, he said the child fell off a second-story balcony while he was sleeping. At one point, Davison even confesses to slamming the child’s head to the floor.
Davison also testified during the trial, telling a 13th story about what happened. He testified a friend he sold drugs to beat the boy to death inside a Bethany apartment he shared with his ex-girlfriend. He claimed the friend killed the boy while he was high on meth in the bathroom.
There was no evidence of meth, a drug transaction or the friend at the apartment that day, according to prosecutors.
Even though the couple had broken up, Davison agreed to babysit Kreedin while Young was at work. Prosecutors alleged Davison may have beaten the child because he was angry Young was dating again.
During closing arguments Thursday, defense attorney Melanie Freeman-Johnson told the jury that Davison’s actions that day were “out of the blue.” She also said Davison wasn’t in his right mind.
“No one saw anything like this coming,” Freeman-Johnson said. “It’s not who he is. There was something going on with him. Something was infecting him.”
The defense attorney urged the jury not to choose the death penalty, calling the punishment “inappropriate” for the case.