William George Davis.Photo: Smith County Jail/AP/Shutterstock
A nurse in Texas who wasconvictedof capital murder for fatally injecting four patients with air has been charged with the death penalty.
William George Davis, 37, was sentenced to death Wednesday for injecting the male patients' arteries with air following their open heart surgeries, theAssociated Pressreports. After about two hours of deliberation, The Smith County jury gave the former cardiac intensive care unit nurse the highest sentence.
According toThe Tyler Morning Telegraph, Davis received his sentencing after the jury decided he “has a probability of being a danger to society and found there are not sufficient mitigating factors that would hinder him from receiving the death penalty.”
While Davis did not speak on the witness stand during his trial and didn’t show visible emotion during his sentencing Wednesday, he cried while hearing a victim impact statement from the widow of one of his victims, who told Davis she forgave him, theTelegraphreports.
Davis previously worked at Christus Trinity Mother Frances Hospital in Tyler, Texas, before he was fired in 2018. According to his arrest affidavit, he was captured on hospital surveillance footage entering the rooms of patients who had been recovering from heart operations, PEOPLE previouslyreported. Just moments after he visited their rooms, the patients' conditions deteriorated.
Between 2017 and 2018, Davis killed John Lafferty, Ronald Clark, Christopher Greenaway and Joseph Kalina, all of whom he injected with air into their arterial lines, resulting in brain damage, PEOPLE reported.
During the trial, cardiac surgeon Dr. William Turner, who treated three of three of the patients Davis killed – Lafferty, Kalina and Greenaway – spoke. Explaining that air entered Greenaway’s brain through the arterial line, the doctor said it was “inconceivable” that air could have entered the patient’s brain during surgery, per theTelegraph.
Before the jury convicted Davis of capital murder Oct. 19, prosecutor Chris Gatewood said the former nurse “enjoyed” injecting the patients with air.
source: people.com
