Page 4 - Smitty S News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

And that woke me up out of a sleep. so i immediately grabbed a pistol. >> it was the side that i go in because i was a little smaller and a little bit more agile. just as i was kind of holding on, swinging my leg through, that's when this big man comes out with a .45 pointed at me. >> i was naked, just me and the gun. she looked at me and i looked at her. >> and i had two officers on either side of me, and they both had shotguns, and they were yelling at him, "police officers," and they racked the shotguns. the sound of a shotgun racking is -- it kind of tunes you up a little bit. >> announcer...

Tampa, the federal jury, that he's been in prison for 12 years, thereby telling them, oh, this is a bad dude, he's done bad stuff. we asked the judge, we need to tell the jury that he's been acquitted and the judge said, no, because that's hearsay. how is it that the government can say he's been in prison for 12 years and we're not allowed to say, yeah, yeah, he was in prison for 12 years for a crime that we acquitted him of. i mean it just made no sense to me. >> narrator: the government also had a surprise witness, smitty's missing ex-wife, bridgett. >> she was sprung on us, and all of this ...

You join any organization that would call themselves outlaws?" i mean, "does that mean you're a criminal?" and he said -- >> outlaws is not a criminal organization. ever since i returned from vietnam, i have been an outlaw to society. i just felt i didn't fit into society anymore. >> this is something that he was testifying from the heart. and when he said that, you could really hear a pin drop in the courtroom. >> announcer: procedures couldn't shake smitty on the stand and failed to present a motive for why he would have committed the murders. after a week-long trial, the jury found smitty n...

Die or go to prison for the rest of my life, on the other handy make up a story against smitty, who i didn't like, which one am i going to do? >> narrator: in 1990, smitty caught a break when the u.s. supreme court ruled that improper jury instructions had been given in many new orleans' trials. smitty was granted a new trial. clive and tom now had a chance to challenge the state's case. >> what i think became very clear when you saw the whole picture of all of these statements, the major informants in the case had just made it up and they were the ones who did the murder. >> now, there's nowh...

Grandparents, all of that stuff was military at one time or another. i dropped out of high school. my dad says, you're either going to go in the service or you're going to go to school, but you're not going to live in this household unless you go to school, and so i said, "sign the papers for me." i was a cocky youngster, and i went in the army when i was 17. and from there i went to vietnam, end of 1966. i was patriotic. i believed in the red, white and blue. i was fighting for america. i came back in december of 1967. >> announcer: smitty, like many returning veterans, felt isolated from civ...