photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Robert Earl Davis leaves the courtroom Friday, Dec. 12, 2025, after being sentenced in the killing of Daniel Evan Brooks.

In a courtroom hallway Friday, the brother of a slain man tightly embraced the sister of the man’s killer — in acknowledgement of the loss both families have suffered.

The emotional gesture — rare in criminal cases — followed the sentencing hearing of 58-year-old Robert Earl Davis, who was ordered to serve nearly 13 years in prison for fatally stabbing Daniel Evan Brooks, 66, of Lawrence, on Aug. 18, 2021, outside a Dillons grocery store. Davis was originally charged with first-degree murder but last month pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter and cruelty to animals. He had also stabbed Brooks’ beloved dog, Bear, who narrowly survived the attack.

photo by: Contributed

Daniel Evan Brooks

Inside the courtroom, the brother of Brooks and the sister of Davis had sought different outcomes; the brother, Don Brooks, wanted Davis to serve the nearly 13-year sentence on top of, not counting, the 1,577 days Davis has served since the killing. The sister, Barbara Davis, wanted her brother, who suffers from severe mental illness, to be sentenced only to the time served and to be allowed to return with her to Texas for treatment.

“I don’t hate him,” Don Brooks told the court, which prompted deep sobs from Davis at the defense table. But the fact remained that his brother, a U.S. Navy veteran, “bled out in that parking lot” in broad daylight after a staggering act of lethal violence.

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Robert Earl Davis is pictured Friday, Dec. 12, 2025, in Douglas County District Court.

His brother was a quiet man who had his own difficulties in life, Brooks said, but he was kind and caring, was an animal lover and was adored by his nieces and nephews. Brooks lamented that just seven months prior to the stabbing he had encouraged his brother to move to Lawrence from Wichita. Lawrence, he told him, is “a safe place.” He could have a better life here with Bear.

“He worried about his puppy and his death, in that order,” Brooks said, imagining the thoughts of his dying brother.

photo by: Lawrence Humane Society

Bear, a dog injured in a stabbing incident that killed his owner in Lawrence on Wednesday, Aug. 18, 2021, rests in the grass during a walk the next day. The Lawrence Humane Society said he was expected to recover from his injuries.

Barbara Davis, though, told the court that she believed her brother’s mental illness had made him see the dog Bear as a threat, causing him to go into “fight” mode. Davis’ attorney, Branden Smith, said Davis was “not fully in control of his mind at the time,” and he likened him to Lennie Small in John Steinbeck’s novella “Of Mice and Men” — a mentally disabled character who unintentionally murders a woman.

Barbara Davis said her brother had an extremely rough life; was raised by a woman with a second-grade education; had suffered a debilitating head injury from a prison attack; and had been homeless and without help in sticking to his needed psychiatric medications.

“Show him grace when no one else has shown him grace or mercy, ever,” she asked Judge Sally Pokorny.

Pokorny could have sentenced Davis, who has the highest possible criminal history score, to more than 20 years in prison. However, she found “substantial and compelling reasons” to depart to the state’s recommendation of nearly 13 years — the main reason being Davis’ schizophrenia.

“He has been cursed” with what Pokorny described as “the worst possible” mental illness, whose sufferers are often afflicted with paranoia, hallucinations and other “nearly impossible” challenges in their daily lives, even when medicated and in stable environments.

The prison term she ordered — 154 months for the killing and 12 months for animal cruelty, to run concurrently — was not about punishing Davis as much as about protecting the community from the violence he is capable of, she said.

“I believe both families have expressed the reality of this case,” Pokorny said, telling the families that “healing has to come outside of a courtroom.”

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Judge Sally Pokorny sentenced Robert Earl Davis to nearly 13 months in prison o Friday, Dec. 12, 2025. His attorney, Branden Smith, is at center.

Davis, when given the opportunity to comment, spoke in a low voice that was difficult to understand.

“I don’t remember,” he said multiple times. “I don’t know how it ended … I know how it started, with his dog sniffing my stuff … After that I don’t remember.”

After the hearing, Brooks told the Journal-World that he didn’t necessarily like the sentence Davis received, but he accepted it, calling it “justice as we know it.”

Davis was previously convicted of multiple violent crimes in 1983. As the Journal-World reported when Davis came up for parole in 2004, Davis pleaded no contest to aggravated battery, rape and aggravated assault. He was charged in the following incidents: a robbery at knifepoint on Jan. 27, 1983; a rape, sodomy and robbery on Jan. 30, 1983; and an assault on Feb. 7, 1983.

The victims told police their attacker wore a ski mask. Davis, who was 16 at the time, admitted committing the crimes shortly after he was taken into custody. Davis was discharged from prison in 2012.

Additionally, Davis was convicted of aggravated battery in 2017. According to Douglas County court records, he was sentenced to 21 months of confinement and was released from supervision in March 2019. Two years later he fatally stabbed Brooks.