A Florida man granted clemency in 2021 by then-President Donald Trump — after he spent nearly 28 years in prison for his role in killing a Syracuse cop — is once again in trouble with the law.
Jaime A. Davidson was charged by Orlando Police for beating and strangling 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 battery by strangulation, a third-degree felony, but he was convicted of one misdemeanor count of domestic battery, which could trigger the revocation of his supervised release.
While prosecutors requested he receive one year behind bars for the battery count, a judge sentenced him to three months in county jail and one year probation. But he could face more prison time yet should it be determined he violated the terms of his supervised release, which is the federal equivalent of parole.
Davidson is appealing his conviction. Whether he returns to federal prison will likely be determined by the outcome.
The news was first 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 grants of clemency doled out by the former president amid the end of his term.
Federal prosecutors said Davidson, a cocaine dealer, orchestrated the robbery that resulted in the 1991 death of Syracuse Police Officer Wallie Howard, who’d 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 while he did not pull the trigger — that was 16-year-old Robert Lawrence — 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 who nobody should give a presidential commutation to” Duncan told the New York Times in 2021,” Davidson would pretty much be at the top of the list.”
