During a three-day trial in the 75th State District Court that ended on Wednesday, March 27, a Liberty County jury sentenced a Beaumont man, 44-year-old Rossy Anderson Davis, to life in prison for a 2019 sexual assault case in the Cleveland area.
In May 2019, Davis traveled from his home in Beaumont to Cleveland to meet up with a 13-year-old female behind the dumpster of her apartment complex where he sexually assaulted her in his vehicle. Afterward, the two continued explicitly communicating via text message about their encounter and talked about how the relationship would continue with her moving in with him and eventually marrying him.
Days later, the child’s mother was going through her phone and found the text messages. After questioning her daughter, she immediately notified the Cleveland Police Department.
At trial, the jury was able to hear from the child victim, now 18, and her mother as well as from the officers who responded from the Cleveland Police Department. The State presented evidence from the Department of Public Safety Crime Lab that showed Davis’ DNA was found on the victim’s clothing that was collected from the time of the sexual assault.
The State also utilized a program called “Cellhawk” that used the historical phone records from Davis’ phone to show that he was in the area of the child’s apartment complex at the time of the sexual assault. The jury finally heard testimony from a previous victim of Davis who testified that he sexually assaulted her when she was just 13.
The jury quickly returned with a verdict of guilty for the crime of Aggravated Sexual Assault of a Child, a first-degree felony due to the fact that the child was under the age of 14 at the time of the sexual assault. Because Davis had a prior conviction for statutory rape out of the State of Georgia, the punishment range for this crime in Texas was life in prison.
The case was prosecuted by Assistant District Attorneys Kevin Barnes and Kayla Hebert. Barnes said afterward, “I would like to thank the jury for their service. This kind of trial is hard to sit through, but they did their duty and helped make Liberty County a safer place.”
District Attorney Jennifer L. Bergman added, “This jury sent a clear and immediate message to the Defendant and to anyone else who would abuse children, in Liberty County: Commit these heinous acts, and this will be your fate. Life in prison was the only appropriate response to this type of evil.”