Tri-Cities rapist faces life in prison after jury finds him guilty of rare 3rd strike
A convicted Tri-Cities rapist is expected to be sentenced to a life term after getting his “third strike” under Washington state law.
A Franklin County jury recently found Eddie James Davis, 42, guilty of attacking a woman in a Pasco motel room in July 2022.
While normally there would be a possibility of him leaving prison, a pair of early 2000s convictions will mean Davis never gets out.
The two convictions means Davis’ latest crime triggers the state’s persistent offender statute, more commonly known as the “three strikes” law.
Three strikes sentences are used for offenders convicted of three violent crimes, including first- and second-degree assault and first- and second-degree rape.
The law calls for a mandatory life sentence. The use of the sentence is relatively rare in Washington state — only 263 of about 12,000 incarcerated offenders are serving prison terms for third strike convictions.
He is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 2.
Davis has a lengthy criminal history that dates back to his teens, but the crimes that matter in this case happened when he was in his late teens and early 20s.
The first conviction for second-degree assault was when he was 18 in King County., according to court records. A Tukwila police officer’s report said he tried to hit an officer and shot at another while fleeing in a stolen car.
Two years later, Davis attacked a man outside a Pasco house, nearly causing the victim to lose sight in one eye.
Since those convictions, he’s been in and out of prison but none of those convictions were considered a “third strike.”
Pasco motel rape
In July 2022, a woman reported she went to Davis’ hotel room at the Tahitian Inn in Pasco. He was an acquaintance.
Later, she was later contacted by police about an unrelated case, and she told the officer that Davis attacked her.
He was charged the next day and a jury found him guilty after a short trial last month.
Previous convictions
Davis has spent much of his adult life in and out of trouble with the law, starting when he was a juvenile with a conviction for third-degree assault in 1999.
The first of his two second-degree assault charges came the next year when a Tukwila police officer spotted him driving a stolen Plymouth Voyager van.
Officers tried to stop the van as it pulled into a hotel parking lot. As police tried to surround him, Davis backed into a tree.
Officers thought he was going to get out and run, but Davis sped toward a Renton police car. The officer inside said she believed he was going to crash into her car but he narrowly missed the car and another officer.
According to court documents, Davis fired a shot during his escape. Later, the van turned up abandoned but police dog found Davis under nearby blackberry bushes.
He eventually pleaded guilty to taking a vehicle without permission and second-degree assault.
His next conviction which counted as his second strike was for a second-degree assault on Ninth Street in Pasco in July 2002. Investigators say Davis attacked a man he knew from school when they saw each other outside a party.
The victim fell and Davis started punching and kicking him in the head and upper body, according to court documents. The victim said the attack was unprovoked.
Davis later pleaded guilty to assault in December 2002 and was sentenced to about 2 1/2 years in prison.
Since then, other convictions have ranged from a misdemeanor assault with sexual motivations in 2006, violating protection orders in 2009 and 2011 and third-degree assault in 2012 and 2019.
His longest sentence came in connection with a 2011 charge for violating a no-contact order. He was sentenced at the time to nearly five years in prison.