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Sexual predator sentenced to death after hiring hit man to slay 13-year-old



Two papers rested on the table in the jury room at the Jo Daviess County Courthouse in Galena on Wednesday afternoon.

One paper demanded David Damm's execution.

The second paper said that 12 men and women could not unanimously agree that Damm deserved to die.

On Wednesday evening, the clerk of court read from the first paper. The second paper lay in a shredded heap, torn to bits by the people charged with deciding Damm's fate.

"It's in the wastebasket in the jury room, your honor," said the jury foreman.

That statement concluded two years of waiting and wondering. 

At 5:10 p.m., Damm was sentenced to die for his crimes. In October 2006, the former cop and used-car salesman paid a longtime friend and known crack cocaine user, Bruce Burt, to kidnap and kill Donnisha Hill. That month, the 13-year-old had produced a paper towel containing Damm's semen and said her neighbor had been sexually abusing her for some time.

But this announcement brought no joy.

The week before, Hill's family rejoiced at guilty verdicts on all charges - first-degree murder, aggravated kidnapping and conspiracy to commit murder. But with the death sentence, nobody sobbed tears of joy. Nobody clapped. Nobody hugged. Instead, the family merely listened to the sentence with a quiet acceptance, and then they left their daughter's murderer in the courtroom. He, too, showed no emotion when the sentence was read.

"It means a lot of good nights' rest for all of us," said Donnisha Hill's mother, Leneaka Johnson. "But today is somber. Even though he is what he is and he created this situation, it still means that someone is going to lose a son, somebody's going to lose a grandfather. And a life is going to be taken. It's nothing to celebrate."

The evening's verdict completed a trying day for Johnson, who was the sole family member to deliver a victim-impact statement to the jury on the last day of testimony in the five-week case.

"My daughter did not die of old age, an incurable disease or by accident as most people do," Johnson read in her prepared statement. "She was driven to a dark, lonely road and beaten to death and then left behind like trash. This is not how her life should have ended. This must not and will not be my deepest memory when I think of her, which is every single day." 

Johnson did not break down and sob, although several jurors wiped away tears as the mother shared her memories of the daughter she called her "Nisha Bug."

While Johnson maintained her composure, the defendant did not. During the break immediately following Johnson's testimony, Damm began to cry. His lips quivered and his hands shook. He reached for tissue after tissue as he repeatedly wiped his face and blew his nose.

It is this emotion the defense touted. Time and time again, lead defense attorney Mark Lyon told of his client's remorse.

"We did not tell him to get up there and cry, to make the tears come and to make his neck shake uncontrollably," Lyon said.

Throughout the day, several witnesses shared testimony as to why Damm did not deserve death. Prison would be hard on the man who receives regular infusions for a rare arthritic disease. His type of crime welcomes violence in prison. When young, Damm enlisted to serve his country in Vietnam, where he endured the Tet Offensive.

But the prosecution offered its own witnesses - one of whom claimed Damm sexually abused her when she was 13 and that she knew of several other girls whom Damm paid for oral sex. 

After hours of testimony and hours more of closing arguments, the jury went to its secluded room to decide, and when jurors emerged, they frustrated defense attorneys who argued for weeks that Burt operated of his own accord. 

"I don't like to second-guess the jury's verdict on anything, but in this particular case the actual killer, Bruce Burt, avoided the death penalty. The person who - based on the jury's verdict - procured or instigated the murder received the death penalty," said Lyon. "It strikes me as disproportionate. I think a lifelong penitentiary sentence would have provided sufficient punishment."

Jo Daviess County State's Attorney Terry Kurt said the sentence was merited and that both the conviction and the sentence were brought on by the turning point in the case - when Damm took the stand. 

"I think when the defendant took the stand and testified the way he did, I think the jury got a real sense of who he was and what he was all about," he said. "I think that showed the depths he would stoop to to lie, and I think that, in a nutshell, was really the key to his undoing."

Judge William Kelly scheduled Damm's execution for Dec. 1, but an appeal is automatically sent to the Supreme Court after each death penalty verdict. Additionally, Illinois has issued a moratorium on executions, and until the governor overturns that decision, nobody on death row can be executed.

"Obviously, he won't be executed on Dec. 1," said Steve Nate, who works with the Illinois Attorney General's Office. "But we don't worry about that. Our job is to come here and seek justice for the victim and the family. That's what we worry about. We can't worry about things like the moratorium." 

The victim's father, Adonnis Hill, agrees. A longtime opponent of the death penalty, Adonnis said he is content to look at his daughter's murderer and know that it was likely the last time.

"Today, I did look at him," Hill said. "I wanted to see if he would make eye contact with me. (When they convicted him) I couldn't look. I was filled with a whole lot of emotion, and I have had to look at this man for the last two years, and you come to a point where you get tired of it. But today I had the energy to give him one last look, knowing that I probably won't see him again."