A man in Florida granted mercy In 2021, then-President Donald Trump — after spending nearly 28 years in prison for his role in the killing of a Syracuse police officer — is once again in trouble with the law.
Jaime A. Davidson was charged by Orlando police with beat and strangle his wife in March 2023, the Tallahassee Democrat reported.
The couple had been married less than six months when Davidson’s wife accused him of choking her during a domestic dispute. He was acquitted in May of domestic violence by strangulation, a third-degree felony, but was convicted of a misdemeanor charge of domestic violence, which could trigger the revocation of his supervised release.
While prosecutors requested that he receive a year behind bars on the battery count, a judge sentenced him to three months in county jail and one year of probation. But he could face more prison time if he is found to have violated the terms of his supervised release, which is the federal equivalent of parole.
Davidson is appealing his sentence. Whether he returns to federal prison will likely be determined by the outcome.
The news was only made public on Tuesday by Judd Legum of popular information. His report came nearly four years after Trump commuted Davidson’s life sentence, one of more than 120 last-minute clemencies handed out to the former president at the end of his term.
Federal prosecutors said Davidson, a cocaine dealer, orchestrated the robbery which resulted in the death in 1991 of Syracuse police officer Wallie Howard, who had been working undercover at the time.
Howard was shot and killed in the parking lot of a Syracuse store, but Davidson was not present at the time. And although he didn’t pull the trigger — 16-year-old Robert Lawrence did — Davidson was sentenced in 1993 to life in prison without parole.
Officials and police at the time were angered by Trump’s decision to release Davidson from prison, including the prosecutor in Davidson’s 1990 conviction, John Duncan,
“If you ask me for a list of people which no one should give a presidential commute to“Duncan told the New York Times in 2021, ‘Davidson would pretty much be at the top of the list.’