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Ray Anthony Davis, a 55-year-old Victoria man, had about two years left to serve on an eight-year sentence for a 2011 drug distribution in Lunenburg County when he attacked an inmate in a prison cell at Deerfield Correctional Center in Southampton County, in May 2018.

According to Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert Clement, Davis was convicted of the offense of malicious wounding in Southampton Circuit Court, but received only two years and three months to serve. “The injured inmate had only one good eye, which Davis gouged with his finger, thereby permanently blinding the man,” said Clement. “Fortunately, we had 12 years suspended over his head requiring good behavior for 30 years from the date of his Lunenburg conviction on December 6, 2011 for distribution of cocaine, third offense.” Six years of the suspended time was imposed for the attack.

Clement said that normally prosecutions of this sort require only a presentation of the new order of conviction, but Clement said he feared that the Southampton sentence was so low that the seriousness of the offense would not be reflected in just the court order. He subpoenaed the victim, who had been released from prison after serving his sentence, and who was now living with his mother, trying to learn to adjust to being blind.

The victim reported that Davis had entered his cell and asked for some food. He and his cellmate declined. The victim then said that Davis started yelling at him, and jabbed his finger into his good eye. He said Davis also kicked and struck him. Davis had claimed that the victim fell and hit his head on the sink.

Davis has past convictions for distributing cocaine in 2006, serving nearly two years in prison, and had a 1993 conviction for an accommodation sale of cocaine.

In the 2011 conviction in Lunenburg, Davis pleaded guilty to having sold about one and a half grams of cocaine in a small plastic baggie corner for $100 to undercover operatives of the local drug task force. When arrested in 2011, Davis admitted to his involvement in distributing drugs, but said he was only “helping out,” and was not a true drug dealer.