Circuit Judge Don Lester handed down a sentence of death, he said Donald Davidson’s crime deserved the ultimate penalty.
Davidson pleaded guilty to the December 2014 attempted rape and subsequent murder of 35-year-old Roseann Welsh, and the kidnapping and rape of her 10-year-old daughter.
Lester also gave Davidson multiple life sentences but said the capital crime of murder was particularly atrocious and cruel.
Davidson showed no reaction to the judge’s pronouncement Wednesday, remaining expressionless as he has throughout the trial. Though he chose to forgo a determination of guilt, a penalty phase was still required, including witnesses testimony and mitigating evidence.
“We essentially put on a full trial because the court still had to render sentence,” State Attorney Melissa Nelson said. "We wanted the court to understand all the facts and circumstances of this really heinous crime."
Outrage over the case has been high from the moment it began. Davidson, a registered sexual predator at the time, had only been out of prison 72 days when the attack occurred.
“From my very first involvement in the case, I thought that the facts demanded the death penalty,” prosecutor Lee Hutton said.
But Hutton and State Attorney Melissa Nelson agreed even the ultimate punishment can’t undo the harm to Roseann Welsh and her children.
“They’ve lost their mother, and no sentence can bring her back,” Nelson said. “They lost her in a horrific set of circumstances and facts, and one of them during this has also lost her innocence.”
Tiffany Lagassee, one of Davidson’s earlier victims, was attacked and strangled when she was pregnant in 2010. First Coast News typically does not identify crime victims, but Lagasse, who testified at trial, said she wanted to speak out.
“There’s no fixing pure evil and that’s what he is,” she said. Still, his death sentence brought a sense of relief. “We can all move on and maybe I can help others that have gone through the same thing. But mainly it’s closure, because he can’t hurt anyone else.”
As with any death penalty case, Davidson’s sentence will be automatically reviewed by the Florida Supreme Court. Davidson’s lead attorney Mark Wright also said they plan to appeal, even as he extended his thoughts to the family.
“I really do hope that the family has closure,” he said. “Obviously there will be an appeal, but at least for now I hope the family has closure.”
Michael and Kim Hajaistron say they don’t know quite what to feel yet – just that while the trial has ended, their grief has not.
“We’ve got a hole in our heart that’s never going to heal,” Michael Hajaistron said. “We might have an ugly scar that forms over a really, really long time but it’s never going to go away.”