AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Published: 8:52 p.m. Wednesday, July 25, 2012
A convicted Austin killer sentenced to be executed for the 2006 murder of his girlfriend's mother died Friday after being discovered unconscious in his cell on Texas' death row, officials said Wednesday.
Authorities said they are investigating the death — a rarity on Texas' death row because security is so tight and convicts are so isolated — amid allegations that he overdosed on pills he may have hoarded in his cell.
No official cause of death has been established, they said.
Jason Clark, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, said Selwyn Davis, 30, was found unconscious during a routine security check by a correctional officer shortly after 9 p.m. Friday at the Polunsky Unit in Livingston, east of Huntsville.
"He was unresponsive on the floor," Clark said. "Staff began lifesaving measures, called 911 and took the offender to the unit infirmary."
Davis was rushed by ambulance to Livingston Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 10:04 p.m., Clark said. An autopsy and cause of death are pending, he said.
Clark said the agency's Office of Inspector General is investigating the death.
In October 2007, Davis was sentenced to death for fatally stabbing Regina Lara in her 38½ Street apartment, capping a two-day crime spree in Austin during August 2006.
Authorities and trial testimony showed that before murdering Lara, Davis had brutally beaten his former girlfriend in her Southeast Austin apartment and threatened to set her afire, sliced his uncle with a knife and taken his aunt's car before going on an overnight drug binge.
Police said he fatally attacked Lara the next day, on Aug. 22, when she came home from work. He then sexually assaulted a teen-age girl, they said.
In seeking the death penalty, prosecutors had revealed Davis' long criminal history that included assaults on police officers and unprovoked attacks — on a teacher and another student — at Lanier High School, and robberies of immigrant workers in the East Riverside Drive area.
When he was 16, Davis attacked a 13-year-old girl by punching her in the face and kicking her in the stomach after her mother told Davis the girl was pregnant, according to testimony at his trial.
Published reports show he had ended his appeals to his sentence in 2008, but they had since resumed.
Contact Mike Ward at 474-2791
