TYLER, Texas — Editor's Note: The above video aired April 18, 2024.
The defense team of East Texas nurse and serial killer William George Davis, who is currently appealing his conviction, says their office acted legally, ethically and professionally while seeking to clarify reports "harassment" against members of the 2021 jury.
Last week, 114th District Court Judge Austin Reeve Jackson issued an order prohibiting the defense team from contacting jurors without approval from the court. He said a violation of this order could result someone serving 180 days in jail. Jackson said he received multiple calls jurors saying the members of his defense team would not accept no for answer.
In a document filed Monday, Kelsey Peregoy with the Office of Capital and Forensic Writs, which is serving as Davis' counsel for the appeals process, said the office always tries to be sensitive when approaching jurors and would never want a juror to feel harassed. She said the OCFW seeks to contact jurors during reasonable hours and when it is most likely that they will be available and willing to have a conversation about their jury service.
During the last week's hearing, Jackson said jurors were contacted at varying hours day and night. Their former and current employers were contacted, and the defense even visited an elderly parent of a juror who in an assisted living facility.
In response, Peregoy said the OCFW does not typically contact jurors at the former or current places of employment, but they do use publicly available information to try and locate their current home addresses to be contacted and interviewed in their own home. She said this information can sometimes be inaccurate.
Regarding the contact of the elderly parent, the defense said their team was trying to contact a juror when they later realized it was a juror's mother's apartment that was located in an independent assisted living facility. Peregoy said the interaction with the mother was brief and she offered the juror's home address.
"As in all OCFW cases, there was no intent to contact or seek out any juror's family member. The OCFW sincerely regrets any consternation or distress that accidentally knocking on the door of the juror's mother may have caused," the document read.
Peregoy said she wasn't informed of the complaints until receiving the court's written and verbal order. She said the team regrets if any jurors were uncomfortable with the interview process and thanked the jurors who spoke with the OCFW team.
After issuing the order, Jackson did say amendments to change it could be requested from the defense.
Davis was sentenced to death in October 2021 for killing four patients while working as a nurse at the Christus Trinity Mother Frances Louis and Peaches Owen Heart Hospital by injecting air into the patients' arterial systems.