By JOSEPH FITZGERALD

PROVIDENCE — Joshua Davis, the Woonsocket man who raped and killed 8-year-old Savannah Smith in 2006, will spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole.

That was the murder sentence handed down Wednesday by Providence County Superior Court Judge Gilbert V. Indeglia, who also sentenced Davis to life imprisonment for first-degree child molestation and life imprisonment for kidnapping, with all three sentences to be served consecutively.
Davis, 23, formerly of 564 Coe St., Woonsocket, pleaded guilty in April to kidnapping, raping and strangling Smith, who lived across the street from him.
Indeglia sentenced Davis following hours of graphic testimony from assistant Medical Examiner Dr. Peter A. Gillespie; chilling closing statements from state prosecutors; and emotional victim impact statements from Savannah’s parents, David and Lisa Smith.
On May 8, 2006, Savannah Smith was kidnapped and killed after she was taken from her Globe Park neighborhood in Woonsocket by Davis, who was 20 at the time.
Police later found the body of the missing 8-year-old girl in woods near an industrial area in Cranston, and charged Davis, the boyfriend of Savannah’s babysitter, with murder. Davis has been held without bail at the ACI since his arrest.
About two dozen members of Savannah’s family, including her mother and father, packed the courtroom Wednesday, along with a contingent of Cranston and Woonsocket police officers. Also sitting in on the hearing was Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch.
“He took away what I created. He had no right,” Lisa Smith said in her statement to the court. “He beat, raped and tortured my baby. I loath him. There are no words to describe what it feels like to not have been able to comfort and protect my baby from what he did to her.”
“Eye for an eye,” she said. “He makes me sick. He’s the lowest piece of scum on earth. Only an animal would beat and rape an innocent child. I want him to die in prison.”
Talking to reporters after the sentencing, Lisa Smith said she was happy justice prevailed. “It’s a good day,” said Smith, surrounded by family members. “He’s right where he belongs — in the doghouse. This animal could never have been rehabilitated.”
Commenting on her deceased daughter, Smith said, “I’ll always remember her smile and giggles. She would have been something. But he took that away from her.”
“I’m very happy,” David Smith told reporters. “This is justice and it will keep a killer off the streets. Even though I’m happy with the sentence, I don’t have a daughter anymore.”
Prosecutors recommended the sentencing Indeglia imposed, the maximum penalty under Rhode Island law. Davis was the 27th person in the state to be sentenced to life without parole, but his case was the first to involve a child victim — and the first in which a defendant facing that sentence admitted his guilt rather than go to trial.
Before deliberations, Indeglia was asked to consider the possibly Davis could be rehabilitated. The judge later called that proposition “highly unlikely,” saying there was nothing “more cruel, inhumane, savage and vicious than what this defendant did to this little girl.”
After Davis was formally sentenced and led out of the courtroom in handcuffs and leg shackles, some of Savannah’s Smith’s family members applauded and yelled out, “Bye bye.”
It might have been Davis’ own words, in letters to a fellow inmate and to family members over the past three years, that ruled out any suggestion he could be rehabilitated.
In one such letter, Davis touched on a scheme to blow up the attorney general’s office and destroy the evidence against him. In another, he made threats against David Smith and other members of Savannah’s family, wishing that they, too, could suffer “a worse death than their little girl.”
In yet another letter, Davis described the day he kidnapped Savannah, calling her his “mermaid” and saying how much he enjoyed his “catch.”
Davis’ attorney, public defender John Hardiman, asked Indeglia to take into consideration the influence of alcohol and drugs in the events of May 8, 2006.
“He makes no excuses for what he did and he’s accepted responsibility,” said Hardiman, who reminded the court that Davis agreed to plead guilty in order to spare the family the ordeal of a trial. “But I think it’s important to highlight some facts in the case.”
According to Hardiman, on the day of the murder Davis consumed two 12-packs of beer, two marijuana cigarettes and crack cocaine. Hardiman described his client as a troubled man with no family life who was sexually abused as a young boy, had attempted suicide on at least two occasions and has battled a psychiatric illness for which he had been taking medication.
Indeglia acknowledged Davis’ troubled past and lifelong battle with drugs and alcohol, but said “(these disadvantages) were not so bad that they could ever justify his conduct.”
Davis wore the same white dress shirt and black slacks he had on when he pleaded guilty in April. Reading a prepared statement Tuesday, he said he was sorry for the pain he has caused Savannah’s Smith’s family. “Drugs and alcohol have ruined my life,” he said. “I understand your hatred towards me. I’m sorry for the pain I brought upon your family.”
Dr. Gillespie described the nature of Savannah’s injuries under questioning by Assistant Attorney General J. Patrick Youngs. Gillespie, who was called to the crime scene that day, testified that Savannah Smith had extensive contusions and abrasions to her face, torso and extremities, including lacerations to her vagina.
According to Gillespie, the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head and manual strangulation, saying the injuries to her head and vagina were inflicted while she was alive.
In her closing statements to the court, Assistant Attorney General Bethany Macktaz described Davis as a cold-blooded killer, an unrepentant “devil without a soul.”
Macktaz described how Davis drove Smith to a wooded area littered with debris, then brutally beat and raped her before he strangled her. When Davis was finished, he discarded Savannah’s clothes and covered her bloodied, bruised body with an old rug he found nearby. He then went back to his car, wiped the blood off his hands and drove to his grandfather’s house in Warwick.
“She was 8 years, 4 months old, was 4 foot, 3 inches tall and weighed 42 pounds,” Macktaz said. “She didn’t have a chance against the acts of this defendant. He lured her from the protection of her Woonsocket neighborhood to her death in Cranston. She was alone, naked and scared. She was utterly helpless. Are these the acts of man capable of rehabilitation? Or a man without a soul?”
“The defendant wants you to believe he is remorseful and devastated,” Macktaz told Indeglia. “But he enjoyed what he did to Savannah. This is the real Joshua Davis. The man who ‘enjoyed his catch.’”
Members of Smith’s family openly wept as Macktaz read into the record the grisly details of Savannah’s death. “He beat her and then took a condom out of his pocket and raped her,” Macktaz said. “He stole her innocence and then snuffed out her life. We can only pray that Savannah wasn’t conscious. These crimes were the act of the devil and not someone who can be rehabilitated.”
In a statement released after the hearing, Lynch said of all the murders his office has been called on to investigate, “none were as brutal, offensive and despicable as this one.”
“If ever there was an individual who warranted Rhode Island’s most severe penalty, it is this depraved and monstrous defendant,” he said. “Since his arrest for these abominable crimes at the age of 20, he has continually demonstrated that he is incapable of rehabilitation, and his release into society — ever — would be an aberration of the highest order.”
Said Lynch: “Justice has been served, but only in the legal sense, because in no way can today’s sentence restore Savannah to her family and friends. It  cannot heal their hurt and their deep and abiding grief.”