When paramedics responding to a 911 call arrived at a North Texas apartment, they found on the bathroom floor a dead boy clad only in bandages and a disposable diaper. He appeared to be 3 to 5 years old.
Further investigation determined Davontae Williams actually was 9.
His emaciated body weighed only 36 pounds, about half of what a boy his age should weigh. Evidence showed he had been restrained repeatedly at his wrists and ankles. A pediatrician later would testify that he had more than 250 distinct injuries, including burns from cigarettes or cigars and scars from ligatures, and that a lack of food made him stop growing.
On Wednesday, Lisa Ann Coleman, the live-in girlfriend of Davontae's mother, is set to be executed for the child's July 2004 death in Arlington. Coleman's trial lawyers said his death was an accident, that the boy had mental health issues, was difficult to handle and she and Marcella Williams, his mother, didn't know how to deal with him in a positive manner.
Coleman, 38, would be the ninth Texas inmate to receive a lethal injection this year. She would be the sixth woman put to death in the nation's busiest capital punishment state since executions resumed in Texas in 1982 and the second this year.
Nationally, she would be only the 15th woman executed since the Supreme Court in 1976 allowed the death penalty to resume. During that same time, nearly 1,400 men have been executed.
After a Tarrant County jury in 2006 convicted Coleman and gave her a death sentence, Marcella Williams, facing similar charges, took a plea deal and accepted a life prison term. Now 33, she not eligible for parole until 2044.
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Attorneys for Coleman argued in appeals that prosecutors improperly defined Davontae's restraints and confinement in a closet as kidnapping to find an aggravating factor so Coleman could be eligible for the death penalty. They also argued that jurors who convicted her of capital murder did so because her trial lawyers were deficient.
"It has never been Lisa Coleman's position that she should not be punished for what she did," attorney John Stickels said in an appeal the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which was rejected Tuesday. "The position of Lisa Coleman is that she is not guilty of a capital crime."
He said he would take the appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Dixie Bersano, an assistant Tarrant County district attorney who prosecuted Coleman, said the punishment was appropriate.
"Davontae died of malnutrition, a slow and cruel process," she said. "There was not an inch of his body that had not been bruised or scarred or injured."
Photos of Davontae shown to jurors were "horrendous" and illustrated his suffering, trial defense attorney Fred Cummings acknowledged, but he believed a life sentence also would have been appropriate for Coleman.
"It just doesn't seem that the system was fairly applied here," Cummings said last week.
Evidence showed child welfare officials repeatedly investigated Marcella Williams but would lose track of her because she kept moving to evade them, fearing they would take away her son and two younger daughters.
