Shortly before 1 p.m. on March 12, 1992, police in Cairo, Illinois were called after the body of 63-year-old Mildred Smith was discovered in her apartment in the McBride Place public housing development. She had been stabbed or cut 38 times. Her apartment, where she ran a business well-known in the neighborhood for selling soda, snacks, candy, and cigarettes, was in disarray, indicating there had been a struggle, although it did not appear to be ransacked. Smith suffered defensive wounds on her arms and was found on the kitchen floor.
The police reports noted that robbery did not appear to be a motive. A red tackle box containing a large amount of money, a plastic bag containing more money, and a white bucket full of coins were in plain sight.
There were no signs of forced entry. In the kitchen, the telephone had been knocked off its stand and was underneath Smith’s body. Cans of soda were strewn about the floor. The freezer door was ajar. A dried blood stain suggested she had been dragged.
In the living room, the television was pulled away from the wall and another telephone was found on the floor with the handset off the base.
Smith’s daughter said that a police scanner that had been on top of the television was missing.
A forensic pathologist conducted an autopsy and concluded that all the wounds appeared to be made by the same knife. Moreover, the pathologist reported that the “location and direction of multiple knife wounds is consistent with a possible left-handed assailant.” Rigor mortis had set in, prompting police to believe the murder occurred the night before.
A week later, a woman named Queen Ward, who lived across the alley from Smith, told police that she saw her neighbor, 18-year-old Isaac Davis, digging a hole in the back yard and dropping something into it.
Three days later, on March 23, 1992, police went to the Davis home. They arrested Davis’s brother, Danny, who was 20 years old, on an outstanding arrest warrant for an unrelated theft. While there, the officers persuaded Isaac to accompany them to the police station. The police found nothing in the back yard.
At the time, Danny had an IQ of 76 and had borderline cognitive functioning. The police told Danny they had evidence that he was involved in the murder, although there were no reports backing that assertion. Danny denied involvement. He said that the night of March 11, he had been out with friends and was in bed by 10 p.m.
Police then began questioning Isaac, who also had cognitive difficulties. His IQ was 76 to 78, putting him at the lower end of borderline intellectual functioning. Police noted that Isaac appeared to be extremely nervous and initially was unable to sign a Miranda waiver form. Not until months later would it be revealed that he suffered from tremors, particularly when reaching for objects.
After the police told Isaac they had evidence he was involved in the crime, he said, “I didn’t kill her.” However, following further questioning, he implicated 22-year-old Devoe Johnson, saying that Johnson had stabbed Smith while Isaac and Danny were present. Isaac said that Danny had buried the knife by a tree across the road from their home.
Later that day, police returned to the Davis home with a search warrant. They recovered a police scanner, a red plastic pail filled with pennies and two sacks with a large quantity of various brands of cigarettes. Police searched for the knife, but did not find it. The police would later claim that they matched the serial number of Smith’s scanner to the scanner they recovered, although there were no records documenting the actual serial number of Smith’s scanner.
The police then questioned Johnson, who denied involvement and said he did not see either Danny or Isaac on the night before the body was found. Johnson said he didn’t get along with Danny because Danny believed Johnson might be the father of Danny’s girlfriend’s child.
That same day, the police arrested all three men on charges of first-degree murder and armed robbery.
After they were charged, the police interviewed Danny again. This time, his denials were met with threats of the death penalty and physical abuse. Danny later claimed that Police Chief Burl Pickett violently slammed Danny’s hand down on the table. Danny was fearful of Pickett because of an incident when Danny was 11 years old. Pickett had put a gun to Danny’s head and told him he could blow his brains out. After slamming Danny’s hand down, Pickett told him that “if you don’t talk, your black ass is still going to fry,” and that Pickett was going to get a statement “one way or another.”
In the face of the threats and violence, and after he was told that Isaac had confessed and implicated him, Danny gave a statement. Pickett then turned on the tape recorder. Danny would later say he was not given oral Miranda warnings and that he could not read written warnings because he did not know how to read.
In the statement, Danny said that Johnson came to his home and suggested they go to Smith’s apartment because Johnson needed money. He said he and a third person whom he wouldn’t name went to Smith’s apartment. After asking for some cigarettes and soda, “Before I knew it he [Johnson] was already stabbing her.” Danny said that he grabbed cigarettes and the other person grabbed the scanner and they left. He said that Johnson then walked out after them and said, “Man, I killed her, man. I killed her.”
Danny said he then went to his mother’s house which was nearby on 16 th Street. He denied taking part in the stabbing.
The police interviewed Danny again on March 24. During this interview, he admitted carrying a “kitchen knife” when he went to Smith’s apartment. Asked if it was a butcher knife, he said, “Yeah.”
An officer asked, “This knife that you had, did you use it to stab Mildred Smith?”
“No,” Danny said. “I probably nicked her or something like a scratch…”
“You said you may have nicked her with the knife, is that right?” the officer asked.
“Yeah,” Danny said.
Danny said Johnson said he had the situation in hand, so Danny went into a bedroom where he took a bag of change and several cartons of cigarettes. He said that he got rid of the knife in the trash after he left, and the garbage had been picked up.
On April 20, 1992, Danny was interviewed again, this time by Illinois State Police officers, who asserted that Danny had requested they come to see him at the Alexander County Jail. Danny would later deny that he asked to see them.
During this interview in the Alexander County Sheriff’s office, Danny again said he was innocent. He said that the cigarettes and scanner found in his home had been purchased from a woman named “Candy” and her boyfriend. He said he had been coerced to falsely confess and provided details on his whereabouts the evening before the body was found.
However, when the officers confronted him with his prior statements, Danny then reverted to the version first given by Isaac that they accompanied Johnson, but did not participate in the stabbing.
Over the next several months, Danny asked to speak with a representative of a crisis intervention unit. During those visits, he repeatedly said he was innocent and that he feared that he and Isaac would be found guilty of a crime they did not commit.
No forensic evidence connected the brothers to the crime. Although DNA testing had been performed, it was during the early days of DNA testing, and nothing of value could be ascertained. A tiny dot of blood on Johnson’s clothing had the same blood type as Smith’s, which was of little value.
On August 14, 1992, a hearing on a motion to suppress the statements of Danny and Isaac was held. Danny described how Pickett had smashed Danny’s hand on the table and threatened him with the death penalty. Pickett testified and denied those allegations. It was revealed during his testimony that Pickett had pending charges against him for obstruction of justice and bribery for his actions in a different case. (Pickett was acquitted of those charges in 1993.)
Judge Terry Foster denied the motions to suppress the statements by Isaac and Danny. Judge Foster did grant a request from Johnson’s attorney to sever Johnson’s case from the Davis brothers’ cases.
On September 15, 1992, jury selection began for the joint trial of Danny and Isaac. After eight jurors had been seated, a recess was taken during which the prosecution separately met with Danny and his lawyer and with Isaac and his lawyer. Both men agreed to plead guilty and testify against Johnson after the prosecution agreed not to seek the death penalty.
At Danny’s plea hearing, Judge Foster asked whether any promises had been made to him. Danny replied, “No, sir. I just want to live. That’s the only reason I am pleading to it.”
During Isaac’s plea hearing, he broke down, sobbing, as he testified that Danny and Johnson had stabbed Smith at least 20 times.
Johnson went to trial on September 28, 1992. He waived a jury and chose to have his case decided by Judge Foster. During the five-day trial, Danny and Isaac both testified, though their accounts varied and were contradictory at times. Danny, during his testimony, sought to maintain his innocence and then to invoke his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination. After a recess, during which his lawyer was called to the building, he resumed testifying consistently with his earlier confession.
Johnson testified and denied involvement in the crime. The defense called a prisoner at the Shawnee Correctional Center who testified that Isaac had confided in him that Johnson was not in Smith’s apartment. Several friends of Johnson testified he was with them at the time of the crime.
On October 2, 1992, Judge Foster acquitted Johnson. “I find Danny and Isaac’s testimony simply not reliable enough to convict Mr. Johnson beyond a reasonable doubt,” Judge Foster said. He concluded that “the inconsistencies and uncertainties in his testimony far outweigh the indications of truthfulness and their reliability.”
On November 6, 1992, Jude Foster sentenced Danny to life in prison without parole. He sentenced Isaac to 35 years in prison.
“We did not kill her,” Danny declared. “I am not a violent person. I have a heart for everybody on this earth.”
Danny filed a motion to withdraw his guilty plea, arguing that his defense attorney, Kim Noffke, had a conflict of interest because at the time he was representing Danny, Noffke was running for election as state’s attorney in nearby Pope County. Danny also argued that Noffke had provided ineffective assistance of counsel by failing to address the fact that Danny was right-handed and the autopsy report said the stabber was likely left-handed.
The motion to withdraw his plea was denied. The Illinois Appellate Court affirmed the denial in November 1994.
In 1998, Danny filed a motion for DNA testing, which was denied because, under the law in effect at the time, he was barred from seeking the testing since he had pled guilty.
He continued filing post-conviction motions over the next decade. All were denied or dismissed.
On November 30, 2018, Lauren Myerscough-Mueller and Karl Leonard of the Exoneration Project at the University of Chicago Law School, Lauren Kaeseberg and Maria de Arteaga of the Illinois Innocence Project, and Vanessa Potkin of the Innocence Project, filed a motion for DNA testing. Although much of the evidence in the case no longer existed, a search turned up fingernail clippings from Smith.
A hearing was held on the motion in November 2020. Deanna Lankford, director of forensic casework at Bode Technology, testified that it was possible to obtain valuable evidence in a case in which the victim appeared to have been defending herself. “I believe there was some type of struggle,” Lankford said. “In those cases, it’s very common for a victim to have assailant DNA under her fingernails.”
At the conclusion of the hearing, the testing was ordered on 14 fingernail clippings/fragments. Male DNA was obtained on four of the clippings. Danny and Isaac Davis and Johnson were excluded as the sources of the male DNA. In May 2021, a search of the Illinois State Combined DNA Index System did not yield any potential candidates to compare to the unknown male DNA.
In June 2021, the trial court ordered similar searches of DNA databases in Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Indiana. Missouri refused to do a search. Searches in the other states were negative.
In February 2024, Danny’s legal team filed a petition seeking to vacate his conviction. In addition to the DNA test results, the petition cited evidence pointing to critical witnesses and possible suspects, some of which was not disclosed by the prosecution prior to the brothers pleading guilty.
These documents included a 911 call log showing that on March 9, the night before Smith was killed, an ambulance was summoned to the McBride development because an eight-month-old infant had suffered a head injury.
The log showed another call from the mother of the child at 8:50 p.m. on March 10, the night Smith was killed. She said that if “they try to take her baby, she would kill them all. There would be a killing.” Smith’s autopsy noted that the mother of the child was staying with Smith.
The child subsequently died and the death was declared a homicide. No one had ever been charged. The older brother of the mother had a lengthy record for violent acts and was left-handed, the petition noted.
The petition also noted that a man was stalking Smith’s daughter and a month after the murder, Smith’s daughter obtained an order of protection.
The petition said the person referred to as “Candy” had a long record of thefts and burglaries.
The prosecution also did not disclose that a woman named Barbara Holder had been at Smith’s apartment on the night that Smith was killed. She was still there when Smith’s daughter left for the night at 9 p.m., the petition said. Holder may have had valuable information for the defense, the petition said.
The petition also cited a report by Dr. Michael O’Connell, a psychologist and expert on false confessions. Dr. O’Connell said that “Danny possessed individual factors that would have made him unusually vulnerable to the interrogative techniques in March of 1992.” He said that Danny was particularly vulnerable to making a false confession due to his cognitive deficits and an unspecified neurodevelopmental disorder. Dr. O’Connell said Danny showed “a strong tendency to be tricked by leading or misleading questions.”
On November 8, 2024, following an evidentiary hearing where Danny’s lawyers presented evidence of his innocence and due process violations, Circuit Court Judge Tyler Edmonds vacated Danny’s conviction and ordered a new trial. The judge cited the DNA evidence as well as the evidence regarding the likelihood that Danny had falsely confessed.
Judge Edmonds also said, “The Court also finds, particularly, the radio log from the police department to be a very significant piece of evidence.” The judge said the failure to disclose the log was “clearly” a violation of Brady v. Maryland , a 1963 U.S. Supreme Court ruling requiring the prosecution to disclose exculpatory evidence to the defense.’
Danny was released on November 12, 2024, more than 32 years since the day he pled guilty. The State initially appealed the court’s decision, but that appeal was later voluntarily dismissed. On November 12, 2025, the prosecution dismissed the case less than a month before a retrial was scheduled to begin.
His brother, Isaac, had earlier been released from prison after serving half of his 35-year sentence. Isaac separately obtained an attorney in an effort to overturn his conviction as well.
– Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 12-05-2025
