Man Sentenced in 1997 Jackson Rape
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Fourteen years after a Jackson woman was raped by a man who broke into her apartment and held her down with a pillow over her face, just has been served. Joseph Davison was sentenced to 24 years in prison on Thursday. He was found guilty in June by a Madison County jury in the April 1997 attack. Davison is no stranger to the Tennessee Prison System. He was convicted of two other burglaries and an attempted rape in Madison County in 1998. After his release from prison, he moved to Illinois. He was arrested there late last year after a DNA hit in the national database. His DNA was actually collected while living in Illinois. At the time of his conviction in Tennessee, DNA samples were not required of felons. Madison County prosecutors were able to avoid the eight year statute of limitations on the rape by using a first of its kind procedure for the area. A “John Doe” warrant was signed against the DNA profile. By initiating a prosecution against the principle’s genetic identity, even without knowing his name at the time, investigators were able to stop the statute of limitations from running out. This was the first case that was handled in this manner in Madison County and the practice has now been adopted as standard operating procedure for the Jackson Police Department. Davison must serve 85 percent of his 24 year sentence before he is eligible for parole, which means he must serve just more than 20 years before he can go before the parole board.
