Petaluma, California was an average small town that people felt safe in, everyone knew each other. When Polly was taken from her upstairs bedroom it caused an outrage, bad things didn’t happen in small towns like this! Jennifer Warren, an L.A. times writer said, “Polly's abduction galvanized her hometown, sparking a massive grassroots search that dramatically altered the standard approach to missing child cases.” But with every negative, comes a positive; two men by the names of Gary French and Bill Rhodes made it known to officers that Polly’s poster could be digitized. Larry Magid came into the picture and put those posters on websites, everywhere. Polly’s missing child poster still remains the most distributed poster going onto magazines
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Including them is a woman who saw Davis and another man near the vicinity of her home shortly after Polly was kidnapped. Polly’s young friends were also in attendance as well as several law enforcement officers. Prosecutors then planned on calling in two dozen witnesses over the next few days in their effort to persuade Sonoma County Municipal Judge Robert P. Dale that Davis should be bound over for trial. On July 6th of 1994, Davis is arraigned in Sonoma County Superior court on eleven felony charges to which he pleads not guilty. The start date for the trial is moved two times before jury selection begins, it is too postponed. Judge Lawrence Antolini suspends jury selection based on a large number of potential jurors express a bias against Davis. Judge Antolini also rules to move the trial out of Sonoma Clara County. In January of 1996, the presiding judge of the Santa Clara County Superior Court ( Jack Komar) rejects a request by attorneys on both sides to further delay the trial by one month. Judge Thomas Charles Hastings is appointed to oversee the trial. After a very long and difficult trial, Davis is convicted on June 18, 1996 of first-degree murder and special circumstances which included robbery, kidnapping, lewd act on a child and burglary. Judge Thomas Hastings sentenced Davis to death by lethal injection. Richard Allen Davis remains on death row in the Adjustment Center at San Quentin State Prison,
Including them is a woman who saw Davis and another man near the vicinity of her home shortly after Polly was kidnapped. Polly’s young friends were also in attendance as well as several law enforcement officers. Prosecutors then planned on calling in two dozen witnesses over the next few days in their effort to persuade Sonoma County Municipal Judge Robert P. Dale that Davis should be bound over for trial. On July 6th of 1994, Davis is arraigned in Sonoma County Superior court on eleven felony charges to which he pleads not guilty. The start date for the trial is moved two times before jury selection begins, it is too postponed. Judge Lawrence Antolini suspends jury selection based on a large number of potential jurors express a bias against Davis. Judge Antolini also rules to move the trial out of Sonoma Clara County. In January of 1996, the presiding judge of the Santa Clara County Superior Court ( Jack Komar) rejects a request by attorneys on both sides to further delay the trial by one month. Judge Thomas Charles Hastings is appointed to oversee the trial. After a very long and difficult trial, Davis is convicted on June 18, 1996 of first-degree murder and special circumstances which included robbery, kidnapping, lewd act on a child and burglary. Judge Thomas Hastings sentenced Davis to death by lethal injection. Richard Allen Davis remains on death row in the Adjustment Center at San Quentin State Prison,