‘Good luck to everybody who wants to kill me’: Houston man could face death penalty

District Attorney Kim Ogg’s office is seeking the death penalty against a man accused of killing three people, including a child, in a murder-for-hire plot — the second time since 2017 that prosecutors have sought the punishment on a recent case. Xavier Davis was charged in July 2021 with capital murder in the shooting deaths of Donyavia Lagway, Gregory Carhee and Harmony Carhee, their 6-year-old daughter. The couple’s 10-year-old girl survived the attack by playing dead. A committee of 15 senior prosecutors voted to seek the death penalty in Davis’ case, said Sean Teare, a division chief for the district attorney’s office, and the defendant was ordered to the 209th District Court to hear the decision as a formality.

“It’s not something that we take lightly — it’s not something that we do very frequently,” Teare said of the decision to seek capital punishment. “The death penalty is, I think, in this administration rightly reserved for the worst of the worst, the worst criminals, the worst crimes. And I think Xavier fits in both of those categories.” Teare is a member of the death penalty committee but he did not vote in this case, since he is leading the prosecution. The district attorney’s office has sought the death penalty twice on cases filed since Ogg took office in 2017. The other recent case involves the slaying of Harris County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Sandeep Dhaliwal during a traffic stop, with defendant Robert Solis facing a capital murder of a police officer charge. The office has sought the punishment during older cases but that number was not immediately known. Judge Brian Warren grew increasingly annoyed as an hour and a half went by Davis’ scheduled 9 a.m. appearance — and he had yet to be brought to the courthouse from the Harris County Jail. Davis’ defense attorney Casey Keirnan and Teare were on time and waited in the courtroom amid most of the delay. Exasperated, the judge then ordered that Davis be brought over immediately.