RINGGOLD, Ga. – As a row of women with connections to his deceased girlfriend sat behind him, Brian Colby Davenport listened as a court clerk announced the verdict in his murder trial Thursday morning.
“Count one,” the clerk read, referring to a charge of malice murder, “guilty.”
The clerk read the next eight counts, each a conviction for felony murder, aggravated assault, two counts of making false statements, two counts of possession of a firearm in the commission of a crime and two counts of tampering with evidence. The jury believed the prosecution’s narrative: Davenport, 49, shot Debora Lynn Abney in the back of the head in a secluded area on Taylors Ridge Road in Ringgold, then put the .38 revolver in Abney’s hands to stage the scene as a suicide.
Davenport will be sentenced in Catoosa County Superior Court on Tuesday at 9 a.m., though there isn’t much room to manipulate his punishment. Malice murder is his most severe crime, and it carries a minimum sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole – a parole for which he would not be eligible until 2047.
As the clerk announced the jury’s verdict, the victim’s mother, Sue McGill, smiled briefly before hugging the woman sitting next to her. And next to them, Emily Abney, the victim’s daughter from a previous relationship, cried.