The Associated Press
CANTON, Ohio — Prosecutors today accused a former police officer of strangling a woman who was pregnant with his child, dumping her body, then lying to investigators as thousands searched for her body last summer in a case that received national attention.
Bobby Cutts Jr. was feeling the pressure of his crumbling marriage, financial debt and supporting several children, Stark County assistant prosecutor Chryssa Hartnett said in her opening statement at Cutts’ trial.
“We are here because of physical pressure — the physical pressure he exerted around the neck of Jessie Davis for the several minutes it took for him to snuff the life out of her and her unborn child,” she said.
Cutts’ attorney, Fernando Mack, told the jury they wouldn’t like the fact that Cutts knew where the body was and left his 2 1/2-year-old son Blake alone for 26 hours, referring to charges of gross abuse of a corpse and child endangering.
But he said that prosecutors did not have the evidence that he killed Davis and only hoped to enrage them enough to convict him of a murder charge.
“They hope that you’ll lose your way,” Mack said.
Cutts, 30, a former Canton patrolman, has pleaded not guilty to aggravated murder, aggravated burglary and other charges in the death of Davis and her female fetus. He faces the death penalty if convicted.
Cutts was supposed to pick up his son on June 13, Jessie Davis’ mother Patricia Porter testified.
After Porter couldn’t reach her daughter, she went to Davis’ house the morning of June 15 and found Blake alone.
“He’s soaked in feces and urine,” Hartnett said.
Porter testified that the 2 1/2-year-old told her: “Mommy’s crying. Mommy broke the table. Mommy’s in the rug.”
Hartnett told jurors that Cutts, who sat with his hand on his chin throughout her opening statement, removed Davis’ body from her house.
“He rolled Jessie up in the comforter from her bed and put her in the back of his truck,” said Hartnett, adding that her feet hung out of the comforter.
Cutts then headed to the home of friend Myisha Ferrell, a high school classmate, and told her that he used his arm to strangle Davis, Hartnett said.
He told her to say that he had arranged for her to baby-sit for Blake — part of his plan to cover up his involvement in the crime, Hartnett said.
“She does it. She lies for him,” Hartnett said.
Prosecutors say Ferrell later told police of Cutts’ admission. She then pleaded guilty to obstructing justice for lying to authorities and complicity to gross abuse of a corpse. She was sentenced to two years in prison.
Mack told the jury not to allow testimony portraying Cutts as a womanizer or horrific photos of Davis’ corpse to anger them into a conviction. Her body was found in a park on June 23 about 20 miles from her home and was badly decomposed.
“They will not tell you the facts and circumstances that led to her death,” Mack said.
Mack also pointed out that the Summit County medical examiner was unable to determine how Davis was killed, listing the cause as “unspecified homicidal violence.”
“They don’t have a cause of death, rather they have hypotheticals,” he said.
The trial is expected to last at least two weeks. An all-white jury will consider the case against Cutts, who is black, and his attorneys have objected to the panel’s lack of racial diversity.