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Trials, including carl holley and penny reed. >> and i said in court that they've got all of these witnesses who were the informants or the snitches. they were bought and paid-for informants. they had been given $250,000 in cash. they had been forgiven seven death sentences, 12 life sentences and 200,000 years in prison. if i went around and gave a witness $10, i would be indicted for bribing witnesses. >> narrator: smitty was tried in federal court in tampa in 1997 alongside three other outlaws. prosecutors argued that while smitty had gone for over a decade without being charged with a crime...

Named bridget, and she's naked. >> as i came around the corner, they had him down handcuffing him. i was scared to death. i didn't know what was going on. >> we asked him where yankee might be. he was gone, and we never saw him again. he kind of disappeared. >> and so they searched the house. says, "okay, you're under arrest." and i was taken in to the jail. >> announcer: smitty was charged with four murders and the attempted homicide of penny reed. he would face the death penalty. >> the police said, "you know smitty, is he the one who did it?" she wasn't sure. somebody had put my name in her...

Of federal witness robert collins. >> they used to have tours when i was on the row. it was the old-style bars. make everybody walk on the far side of the wall so you feel like you're the animal in a zoo. don't feed the animals in the zoo. >> narrator: for four years, smitty waited to be assigned an attorney. then in 1989, harley-riding tom lorenzi volunteered to take his case. >> the first time i met smitty, he said, i'm going to give you my file. it was remarkable. they were the most well-prepared files you would see at any of the most prestigious law firms ever. >> i'd been working on that ...

Had failed to show a motive for why smitty would kill penny reed's boyfriend grizzly and the others. bridget now filled in the blanks, describing a terrifying encounter with grizzly the night before the murders. >> i was leaving work that night, and i was putting my bag into the van. grizzly come up behind me and pushed me into the van. he hit he, held me down, took out his penis and jacked off on me and said "tell smitty that's for him." when i got home that evening, smitty knew something was wrong. my clothes were ripped and i was late. i told him what grizzly was done and what he said to te...

Clive still felt the government's case was a sham, as illustrated by the additional murder they tried to pin on smitty. >> 9 government said through carl hawley that smitty had committed another murder and his getaway driver was another outlaw called junkyard. well, i say to smitty, who's this junkyard? and smitty laughs and says that's the outlaws' dog. and it was just a farce. >> after nearly two months of trial smitty's jury was deadlocked. typically, this would have resulted in a mistrial and smitty going free. >> but the judge then gives the the jury an instruction, called an allen charge...