The man convicted in Polly Klaas’ 1993 kidnapping from a sleepover and subsequent murder is asking the California Superior Court to overturn his death sentence.

Richard Allen Davis, who is locked up at San Quentin State Prison, was sentenced to death for abducting 12-year-old Polly — now known as the first missing girl on the internet — from a sleepover at knifepoint and then strangling her to death.

“On Aug. 5, 1996, Richard Allen Davis was sentenced to death for kidnapping and murdering my 12-year-old daughter Polly Klaas, with the intent to commit lewd acts upon her,” Polly’s father, Marc Klaas, said in an April 4 statement. “At 10:30 p.m. on Oct. 1, 1993, Davis invaded a slumber party at the home Polly shared with her mother in Petaluma, California, where he bound, tied, and blindfolded Polly’s two friends before kidnapping her at knifepoint.”

Two months later, Klaas’ family learned that Davis “murdered Polly and discarded her body on top of a trash pile within hours of abducting her.”

“The intentional killing of another person is wrong and, as governor, I will not oversee the execution of any individual,” Newsom said in a statement at the time. “Our death penalty system has been, by all measures, a failure. 

Marc Klaas said the growth of the internet and social media has “changed the way that the public and law enforcement approach missing kids.” (Polly Klaas Foundation)

“It has discriminated against defendants who are mentally ill, black and brown or can’t afford expensive legal representation. It has provided no public safety benefit or value as a deterrent. It has wasted billions of taxpayer dollars. Most of all, the death penalty is absolute. It’s irreversible and irreparable in the event of human error.”

A press release from Newsom’s office noted that California is one of four states that have issued moratoriums on the death penalty, including Pennsylvania, Colorado and Oregon. Since 1978, California has spent $5 billion on the death penalty system and executed a total of 13 people, according to the release.

Polly’s disappearance, which made headlines across the country in newspapers and on television, also became known as the first high-profile missing persons case to circulate on the internet in 1993, when computers were just taking off.