Page 7 - Smitty Smith News Today

>> announcer: with bridgett gone, smittys alibi looked flimsy and prosecutor rick garfield now turned to the death bed statement of david bostick. >> smitty put himself in the presence of yankee that night. so if he was present with yankee and if bostick was positive that yankee was there, that kills his alibi. >> announcer: with the death penalty hanging in the balance, smitty made a risky move and demanded to take the stand. >> when a defendant testifies in a criminal case, you are hitting the...

In, hes convicted of the five murders hes previously been aquited of and hes acquitted of the one murder hes never been tried for before. smittys the only person in my experience and i think probably in the entire world who has been quatd of every single murder hes ever been charged with but is still serving the rest of his life in prison. >> clive feels the government abused their power to put smitty away. >> when the government uses that, theyre trying to kill people. no less than hall and haw...

Without a cause, and the truth is theyre of more organized. theyre more like a paramilitary criminal organization. theyre mafia on wheels. >> narrator: in the 1970s, president nixon signed into law the racketeering influenced corrupt organization act, better known as rico. >> we shall now be able to launch a total war against organized crime, and we will win this war. >> originally the rico laws were to focus on organized crime. >> traditional la cosa nostra, think the god father, the sopranos k...

To corroborate what j.j. hall and karl holley said, but even that wasnt going to get smitty acquitted. >> narrator: once again, smitty demanded to testify on his own behalf. >> over the years ive tried quite a lot of capital cases, and very rarely do i call my client. >> it is just considered to be suicide. >> i didnt testify in my first trial, and ive been holding my breath, waiting to get up here in this courtroom so i could express myself. i told them i wasnt guilty of nothing. it came down t...

Notorious motorcycle club called "the outlaws" and smitty was the regional president. >> and the gang outlaws was more or less an organized crime syndicate type of thing. >> they were a hard-core motorcycle gang. >> and they had a representation of either being in the drug trade or prostitution or things like that. >> according to the shefrs department, of the 125 outlaw members of the broward chapter between 1975 and 79, there was a total of 56 felony convictions against the members. >> announc...

>> they was trying to kill me. i had a paid attorney at that time. as far as i know, he never did any investigating. after the prosecution finished their case, my lawyer rested. >> i dont think the defense presented any evidence to show that smitty was innocent of the crime. nothing. >> narrator: the trial lasted less than two days and the jury quickly returned with a verdict. guilty. the sentence, death. >> the judge, i have to pronounce this three times, you are to die, die, die in the louisia...