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After the prison-yard murder of Larry Davis in upstate New York, most City papers noted his infamy and folk- or anti-hero status, but for the most part were content to portray him as a vicious thug, murderer, and all-around lowlife. Davis was shanked multiple times by another inmate at the Shawangunk Correctional Facility in Ulster county New York.
Davis was serving a 25 years-to-life sentence there for murder, even after he was acquitted of the 1986 shooting of six NYPD cops despite overwhelming evidence against him. His defense lawyers, William Kunstler and Lynne Stewart, asserted with no corroborating evidence that Davis was the target of an assassination plot by police.
The NY Post called Davis a "thug" who was at the receiving end of prison "justice." The paper quoted a former Bronx assistant district attorney from the 1980s who said "You reap what you sow. He led a violent life. He died a violent death." And Donald O'Sullivan, one of the police officers shot by Davis in 1986, said "[Davis] was not going to die in peace. They made him out to be a choir boy, but he would kill a priest."
A Daily News editorial described Kunstler's and Stewart's defense strategy a "fairy tale," and described the murder of Larry Davis as the "Shawangunk redemption." News of the man's death elicited a sarcastic "Boo hoo" from the editorial board and a send-off epitaph of "Fittingly, he rests in pieces."
And an article in the NYTimes yesterday does the most to play up Davis' reputation as a symbol of resistance to some people, but prefaces its article with the following description: "He was nobody, really, back in the 1980s, just a high school dropout in the Bronx, a short, burly black kid with Mike Tyson muscles who made a living with drugs and guns and fear."
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There are perhaps a dozen or so people out there who know the actual truth of what happened that day, and one of them just died.
Set your commenting phasers to "preconception", and engage.
Maybe he was pegged for the wrong crime here and doesn't deserve so much bad-mouthing after his death, but the guy wasn't a saint by any means. He had a very extensive criminal record and deserved at least most of the jail time he served.
Is the writer of this article really trying to make him out to be a victim? Get serious.
Larry Davis vs David Tarloff @Thunderdome
Streetwise and tenacious black street thug vs bigger deranged Jewish guy
LD
"And Donald O'Sullivan, one of the police officers shot by Davis in 1986"
And Gothamist indulges in some ill-speaking of their own.
whatever, not taking the bait.
just like the pba parade around macdonald and his wheelchair.
People in Jail have very different lives, but lives nonetheless. I'm not sure we'll ever know why he was killed, but there is a reason that makes sense in the peculiar logic of prison. I'd read the book that examined it.
Kunstler and Stewart. Two phony frauds. Should have been sanctioned for their antics at that trial. Good riddance, Larry.
The only thing worse than the acts of Kunstler and Stewart is the fact that the jury actually bought their cr*p.
Why does half the Gothamist staff hate the cops so much? Or at the very least valorize criminality?