Ex-Officer Cutts Dodges Death Sentence

CANTON, Ohio -- A judge sentenced a former Canton police officer to life in prison with no chance of parole for 57 years for killing his pregnant girlfriend and their unborn daughter.

Stark County Common Pleas Judge Charles Brown Jr. rejected a defense request Wednesday to merge the sentences against Bobby Cutts Jr.

The judge could have allowed parole eligibility earlier.

Jurors began deliberating Tuesday morning.

During the sentencing, Davis' sister, Whitney, addressed Cutts while struggling to contain her emotions, saying he manipulated her sister.

"I don't believe you're sorry for what you did," she said. "You're sorry you got caught up in your lies.

"You have not lost someone; you got rid of someone who was an inconvenience to you," she said. "It disgusts me that you're here and she's gone."

Telling the 30-year-old Cutts to put his head down, and "don't even look at me," Davis' father said that the former police officer "violently murdered" his daughter and unborn granddaughter.

Yet when Davis' sobbing mother, Patty Porter, spoke, she addressed Cutts directly, saying, "I want you to look at me, though."

Saying, "I may not have a family to go home to after this," she told Cutts that she had forgiven him.

"I serve an amazing God, Bobby, and I do forgive you," she said, "and I know that it's only through him that I can do that."

Cutts had testified that he accidentally killed Jessie Davis with an elbow blow to the throat during an argument.

He eventually led authorities to her body, which he had dumped in a park.

After returning to the stand after his conviction, Cutts asked jurors to spare his life.