tv Death Row Stories CNN December 22, 2018 8:00pm-9:01pm PST
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>> trouble is so easy to get into, so hard to get out of. on this episode of death row stories. >> these two are dead. shoot the rest. >> quadruple homicide. >> this big man comes out naked with a 45 pointed at me. >> and car bomb tied to the leader of the a motorcycle gang. >> these were powerful people that would make bad things happen. >> but when the government's case falls apart -- >> there was no motive, no forensic evidence. >> they don't give a damn what these juries say, they're going to convict him. >> and i a parent vendetta begins. >> you're going to get the death penalty. we're going to execute you. >> there's a body in the water. >> he was butchered and
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murdered. many people proclaim their innocence. >> in this case there are a number of things that stink. >> this man is remorseless. >> he needs to pay for it with his life. >> the electric chair flashed if front of my eyes. >> get a conviction at all costs. let the truth fall where it may. ♪ >> on february 5, 1983, 12:30 at midnight, i was called at home from the police department. >> i was advised we had had a multiple shooting down the southwest section of the city of ft. lauderdale. >> and being in the homicide squad, i responded to that scene. >> narrator: outside a small one-bedroom apartment, police found a terrified 20-year-old
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woman who had been shot through the hand. inside, police found three dead bodies shot execution style -- and one man clinging to life. in the center of the living room was a harley davidson motorcycle. the two survivors were rushed to broward general hospital. >> my job was to get more information, so i went into one of the surgical rooms where david bostick was. >> narrator: 42-year old bostick had been shot twice in the back. >> he had been checked by doctors and they pretty of said there's nothing we can do. he's dying. >> i went up to him, told him who i was, and he says, "i don't know nothing, i don't want to talk to you," and he was very uncooperative. and i became a little bit more
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pushy it almost became an interrogation, you know, what happened? who shot you? who was there? all of a sudden yankee comes out, the name yankee. so i said, "yankee? yankee shot you?" "i don't know." "he was there?" "yes, he was there." and i could not get him to say yankee shot him, but he's putting yankee at the scene. >> announcer: bostick would die just minutes later. detectives next turned to the lone survivor, penny reed. >> penny was alternating between crying, and you could tell she was almost in shock she was so scared. >> announcer: penny reluctantly described the vicious crime scene. >> penny was awakened by an individual while she was sleeping with her boyfriend, grizzly. and he was awakened by somebody banging on his leg or foot with a gun who had handcuffs in his
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hand. the individual with the gun said, you know what this is about, put these handcuffs on, you're coming with me. he said, "i'm not going with you," and then pedestriany said he was shot immediately in the head. he turns the gun to her and she begged for her life. >> please don't, please don't, and she literally takes her hand and puts it on top of her head like this. >> and he fired at her. >> but the bullet went right through her hand and right over the top of her head and into the wall, but she left her hand there. >> and she just fell into the bed, in his blood and didn't move. >> and she had the presence of mind to lay as still as she could. i mean it was truly remarkable. >> narrator: penny said after she was shot, she heard a voice in the living room. >> she did hear this individual say, "these two are dead, shoot the rest."
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>> as soon as she felt they left, she literally ran out the back door and ran to the neighbor's house. >> she's by the grace of god alive. you just want to grab her by the arms and shake her and say, "what else happened?" but when you got to the particulars of the individual that did the shooting, she was a little hesitant or withdrawn as to who it might be, and that to me was a red flag as to she knows this guy, she was deathly afraid. >> announcer: a friend that penny called for support soon arrived at the emergency room. >> they whit perred back and forth, and he eventually turned around to me and said, "she knows who the shooter was." >> she called him smitty. >> we knew that smitty and this guy yankee always hung out together, so that puts them together, and more than likely at that scene. >> announcer: detectives knew smitty and yafrpnkee belonged t
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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 shefr's 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. >> announcer: the morning after the murders, detectives moody and benoit tracked smitty to a house in ft. lauderdale. >> i lived right off the approach end of the runway of ft. lauderdale airport. you get used to a lot of noise. >> we banged on the door, trying to see if anybody was home, and no answer. >> so we broke out the window. >> i heard glass being broke,
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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: smitty backed into the bedroom and put his gun down. >> i was in the process of putting my pants on when i walked back out, i'm facing a bunch of guns then. they said, "put your hands up." i didn't have my pants all the way up, so they went down to my ankles and my hands went up in the air. >> and during this, then his girlfriend comes out, a girl
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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 mouth. i said, "look, i'm not guilty of nothing." our mission is to provide complete, balanced nutrition... for strength and energy! whoo-hoo! great-tasting ensure. with nine grams of protein and twenty-six vitamins and minerals. ensure. now up to 30 grams of protein
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a book that you're ready to share with the world? get published now, call for your free publisher kit today! ♪ >> announcer: in the spring of 1983, clarence "smitty" smith, the president of the outlaws motorcycle club in florida, was about to stand trial for a quadruple homicide in ft. lauderdale. >> mr. smith, how are you doing this morning? >> announcer: smitty's alleged accomplice, a biker known as yankee, had eluded authorities. public defender took on smitty's case. >> some of the outlaws were a bit rough around the edges. smitty as far as personality was concerned was not like that at all. i felt he had a compelling story to tell. >> my dad was ex-military.
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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 civilian life and found a haven in the motorcycle club. >> being a soldier, you couldn't relate to people back on the streets. i'd just as soon be around
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people that i could relate to. we had our love for motorcycles, the freedom of the road, came down to fight and raise hell. >> announcer: weeks before smitty's 1983 trial, he married his girlfriend bridgett in a jail house ceremony. >> smitty was about to stand trial for his life. if he lost, he had a very good chance of going to death row and he wanted and she wanted to be able to formalize their relationship before that happened. >> i bought a nice dress, did my makeup and hair. to me it was a celebration of life. >> she brought in a cake, had a nice white dress on, flowers. she looked good. >> announcer: now a married man, smitty took an active role in his case. >> smitty was intelligence in his approach to the evidence, and he wasn't talking like
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somebody who was just trying to attack the state's case. he was talking like somebody who was trying to figure out what happened, you know, who actually did it. >> announcer: at smitty's trial, prosecutor rick garfield called penny reed, the sole survivor of the murders, to the witness stand. >> i found her to be a very courageous person. she could have just maintained that she did not know who the person was that did these killings. >> announcer: penny testified that she met smitty a few weeks before the murders, and yet her description of the killer to police didn't match smitty's appearance. >> penny reed's initial description to the police was of a fairly thin or skinny individual, and she did not recall if he had a beard. >> if she couldn't tell, how good a look did she get at the man to make an identification?
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smitty clearly had a beard. >> not a skinny build by any stretch of the imagination, so it just didn't match up. >> announcer: for corroboration, tenbrook also submitted smitty's alibi, turning to smitty's wife bridgett who had been working in a topless bar. >> smitty's alibi was that he was essentially bar hopping with yankee and some of his other friends, and i listed bridgett as a defense witness because she was with him on the night of the murders. >> but before she was slated to testify and just days after their marriage, bridgett disappeared. >> i was concerned because she was listed as a defense witness. smitty was concerned because this is his wife. >> i was calling back and forth the whole time i was locked up. she had a heavy drug and alcohol habit. i thought if she just moved in with one of the guys on the bar.
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>> announcer: with bridgett gone, smitty's 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 reset button. if the jury believes the defendant, he will walk. if the jury does not believe the defendant, he will not walk. >> i just wanted them to see the truth. i refused to cut my hair or cut my beard or change my looks in any way. i wanted that jury to see me just how i lived it every day of the week. >> and i said, "well, why would
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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 not guilt owe on all charges. >> smitty shook my hand. he went up, he shook the hand of the judge, thanked him for giving him a fair trial, and at the door of the courthouse other members of the outlaws had brought smitty's harley.
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>> announcer: after smitty was exonerated, prosecutors dropped all charges against his alleged accomplice, a still-missing yankee. but smitty was now a marked man. >> after being acquitted for the murders in ft. lauderdale, i had people with badges saying that they were going to get me off the street one way or the other. >> announcer: a few months later, police told smitty he could come to the station house to pick up his personal items from the investigation. >> well, i'm in the office signing for the property. i look up and i've got about ten cops coming up behind me. i said, "you got to be [ bleep ] me." >> announcer: for the second time in less than a year, smitty would be charged with murder and once again face the death penalty. building a better bank starts with looking at something old, and saying, "really?" so capital one is building something completely new. capital one cafes.
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♪ he eats a bowl of hammers at every meal ♪ ♪ he holds your house in the palm of his hand ♪ ♪ he's your home and auto man ♪ big jim, he's got you covered ♪ ♪ great big jim, there ain't no other ♪ -so, this is covered, right? -yes, ma'am. take care of it for you right now. giddyup! hi! this is jamie. we need some help.
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yippiekiyay. ♪ mom. ♪ ♪ >> narrator: just months after clarence "smitty" smith was acquitted of a quadruple homicide in ft. lauderdale, he was arrested for a car bombing that had occurred two years earlier in new orleans. >> you know, i was only out three months and i was back in again, and i says, "well, i'm back under arrest again,
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ft. lauderdale police." yep, told you we was going to get you, and then they extradited me over to new orleans. >> narrator: the fbi believed smitty was behind the murder-for-hire killing of a federal witness named robert collins in 1981. >> robert collins had evidence against what was regarded then as one of the more powerful organized crime families in the united states that allegedly was buying and distributing drugs throughout the gulf coast. >> narrator: the 38-year-old collins had turned state's witness after being caught with cocaine, but collins was murdered before he could testify. dea agent bill dodge was collins' handler. >> we were all concerned with his safety. we told him the possibility of danger. we offered him the witness protection, and he didn't want to go into that at all. he was the type of individual that just basically said, "i'll take my chances, i'm not worried
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about 'em." >> narrator: smitty's trial began in february 1985, and the main witnesses against smitty would be two fellow outlaw bikers from florida. these men had given the government information about the collins murder in exchange for reduced sentences in their other crimes. >> the main witnesses that the state relied upon were j.j. hall and karl holley. both were members of the outlaws motorcycle gang in florida. >> narrator: smitty felt hall and holley had it in for him because he demoted them after a clubhouse altercation. >> j.j. hall and karl holley made a deal with the feds to put the finger on smitty. i'll give you the boss, that was their thinking. >> narrator: on the stand, j.j. hall said he had been offered $12,000 to murder collins, and he chose karl holley and smitty to carry out the hit.
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>> out of the two people, which would had the best training and the ability of doing explosive work? holley said that smitty had that experience from his time in the military. >> narrator: karl holley described how he carried out the hit with smitty. >> holley and smith went to jacksonville and met with another biker who provided the c-4. he brought out a three-foot stick of the explosive, they cut off a foot of it and they started a continuous drive to new orleans to conduct the hit. they went back to collins' house that night. smith said, drop me off and pick me up in a few minutes, i'll take care of it. >> narrator: holley said smitty then shimmied under collins' truck and wired explosives to the brake lights. they went to a motel and waited. >> around 7:30 that sunday morning when robert lee collins was backing out of his driveway in his pickup truck, he tapped the brakes.
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>> narrator: the force of the explosion ripped apart the truck and robert collins. >> both legs were blown off essentially. most of his left hand, and then on the right hand two or three fingers. he lived for six hours or so but essentially died of the blunt force trauma and bleeding to death. >> holley and smith learned on the news that the explosion had happened and so they drove back immediately to florida, got paid and went their way. >> narrator: prosecutors decided not to charge smitty with the federal crime of killing a witness. instead, he was tried in louisiana state court for capital murder. >> the state of louisiana had capital punishment as a potential sentence. the federal government did not have that at the time. there was ever a case for the death penalty, it was certainly this particular case.
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>> 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 don't 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 louisiana electric chair. one of my club brothers said, "if you want truth, go to a whore house. if you want to get [ bleep ], go to a courthouse. that's exactly how i felt. i did not commit that murder.
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>> a bomb is a cowardly way of killing someone. i think for a good ten years there wasn't a day that went by that i didn't glance under the car and look for something. >> narrator: smitty was sent to death row at the notorious angola prison. >> why, they took me over to the death row side. i look in, i see this white guy laying on a bed naked and his legs propped up against the wall and he was writing on the wall in [ bleep ]. i says, oh, man, where in the hell am i at. >> narrator: smitty would spend almost four years on death row before he even had a chance to mount an appeal. attorney tom lorenzi took on his case. >> this was a major war between forces of the government on the one hand and motorcycle club culture on the other, and this trial of his was a battle. i thought i knew what was ahead.
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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 case ever since i have been in louisiana. i had collected a lot of stuff that i had mailed in to me from these different trials. it was almost a couple thousand pages i collected. >> he had such a mind for the
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details that he was able to begin showing the fallacies and the falsehoods in his case, and i had never done an appeal of a capital case. it was terrifying. >> narrator: lorenzi knew he faced an uphill battle, so he enlisted the help of veteran appeals attorney clive stafford smith. >> i had worked on another capital case where i had needed a favor and tom lorenzi had very kindly helped me out. so when tom got roped into smitty's case, he called me back and i sort of owed him a favor. >> narrator: clive was concerned to learn that hard-line judge frank shea, notorious for fast tracking trials, would lead the proceedings. >> there was no way on god's earth that smitty was going to get a fair trial in front of judge shea. >> narrator: so clive came up with a risky plan to get judge shea removed from the case. >> i had someone follow him at
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lunch time and ask the waiter what it was that judge shea was working, and the waiter said it was vodka tonic and he had been drinking a lot of them. so obviously the first thing he did was going to judge shea and tell him a bunch of liberal people were counting the number of drinks he was having. so judge shea came into court after lunch furious with me, and so he had come up with this plan, which was to announce that he was biased against smitty and that he was biased against us as his lawyers, so he took himself off the case, which, of course, was exactly what i wanted to happen. >> narrator: but even with a new judge, clive and tom knew they would have to discredit the government's witnesses, j.j. hall and karl holley. >> i said in court that hall and holley, were both of them facing the death penalty along with thousands of years in prison. so they're sitting there saying, hmm, on the one hand i get to
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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 nowhere in smitty's military records does it show he has any specialized training involving explosives. >> i've seen that bomb being made right there in the courtroom, and a mental midget could make that bomb. it didn't require no expert, but i never built a bomb. >> there was absolutely nothing
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to corroborate what j.j. hall and karl holley said, but even that wasn't going to get smitty acquitted. >> narrator: once again, smitty demanded to testify on his own behalf. >> over the years i've tried quite a lot of capital cases, and very rarely do i call my client. >> it is just considered to be suicide. >> i didn't testify in my first trial, and i've been holding my breath, waiting to get up here in this courtroom so i could express myself. i told them i wasn't guilty of nothing. it came down to the jury believing either me or them. >> narrator: after a week-long trial, the jury returned with a verdict. not guilty. after eight years on death row, smitty was a free man. >> my knees got weak. clive even reached out and i said i was okay, but i was reborn again.
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that's the way i felt. >> narrator: smitty had now been found not guilty of a total of five murders. clive and tom warned smitty that the government wouldn't be happy about twice losing to a president of the outlaws. smitty was now squarely in their sights. >> sooner or later there was going to be another round. what form or format it was going to take he didn't know. >> i was saying, smitty, you know, you have a big old knock on your back, there are going to be a lot of people who are very angry about this. you just need to go off and get on with your life and do it as quietly as you can. >> narrator: clive and tom's predictions would come true when federal agents again arrested smitty, this time charging him in federal court for the exact same murders of which he had already been found innocent.
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organized crime, with a major battle targeting the outlaws. >> they performed theft, arson, and the dealing in stolen property and prostitution. >> and their willingness to expand and to fight their rivals is what's allowed them to flourish. >> narrator: dea agent charles falco was one of a handful of undercover federal agents to successfully infiltrate the outlaws. >> well, since florida is a main hub for cocaine coming from south america to the rest of the country, the florida outlaws would have had the power to distribute the coke to the midwest and east coast. so really the basis of outlaw power comes from the state of florida. >> narrator: smitty, as florida president, was viewed as a high-ranking target. >> when we as a society look at bikers in general, we think of a free-loving, free-spirited rebel
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without a cause, and the truth is they're of more organized. they're more like a paramilitary criminal organization. they're 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 kind of thing. the purpose was to take down an organization as opposed to just one individual for just one crime. >> narrator: after his exoneration from death row, smitty had used his experience in court to help his fellow outlaws fight back in their own trials. >> i volunteered two or three
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different rico trials as a liaison between our club and their attorneys. i was getting pointed out in that trial by the judge and prosecutors more than some of the clients were. >> i think ultimately why he ended up getting prosecuted again, because he irritated the fbi so much because he was out there trying to help his brothers. >> narrator: in november of 1996, federal agents arrested smitty and charged him with dozens of violations of federal rico laws. most shocking for smitty was that he was charged again for the murders in ft. lauderdale and new orleans. >> i says, i won two state trials. they says, that's right, this is the federal government, those trials mean absolutely nothing. i said, oh, yeah? that was my whole life and it means nothing. >> we all know about double jeopardy and the fact that once you've been tried for something
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and acquitted you can't be tried again, but the government considers the state and the federal government as two separate sovereignties and so they can try people for the same offense twice. you know, that's madness. >> they just decided, we don't give a -- what these juries say. we're going to find a forum that's going to convict him. >> narrator: in order to charge smitty under rico, one of his crimes had to have been committed within the previous two years, so the government charged him with narcotics distribution. >> one of the undercover informants said we was sitting at a table and the guy gave me a line of speed, and i told the guy to give my buddy a line. it wasn't even a line, it was a toot. that was my one distribution charge. >> narrator: federal prosecutors enlisted many of the same witnesses who had testified against smitty in previous
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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, that was because he had been held behind bars. >> the government is then allowed to tell the jury in
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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 stuff with bridgett was a big surprise to me and, frankly, to smitty. >> narrator: i was worried a little bit, but i knew for a fact that there was nothing she could say about me. >> narrator: but bridgett was about to reveal what she had seen in ft. lauderdale 14 years earlier and why she had fled. >> i took off because i didn't
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want to lie because i knew that he killed those people in florida and he got off scott-free. ♪ our mission is to provide complete, balanced nutrition... for strength and energy! whoo-hoo! great-tasting ensure. with nine grams of protein and twenty-six vitamins and minerals. ensure. now up to 30 grams of protein for strength and energy!
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in 1997 clarence smitty smith was put on trial for rico violations in federal court. and bridget, smitty's estranged wife, had returned to testify against him. >> the outlaws told me that wives can't testify against husbands. and to me that was the way to save my life. because until they told me to marry him, i was waiting for one of them to kill me. >> when bridget learned she might be asked to corroborate smitty's alibi of bar hopping with yankee the night of the murders, she panicked. >> i decided to run and run as far as i could. i had heard before i left that the girl survived and she was identifying smitty. so i 110% thought he was going to prison. >> prosecutors in ft. lauderdale
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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 tell smitty, that that was for him. >> the following night, grizzly
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and three others would be murdered. >> my stomach dropped to the floor. my heart, everything. i really feel like everybody's life was taken because i told. >> smitty believes that bridget like jj hall and carl hawley got a deal in exchange for testifying against him. >> she got busted herself out in arizona and said she was driving a mercedes-benz 90 mile an hour, naked, and almost rear-ended an arizona state trooper. she had cocaine with her. >> i wasn't offered anything from the government. i decided to testify because smitty should not be out on the streets. he is a killer. >> despite bridget's testimony,
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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, which is basically you really need to reach an agreement if you can. it's a dreadful thing. it's just basically coercing jurors. >> faced with pressure to reach a verdict, the jury reached a decision in just two hours. >> when the verdict comes back
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in, he's convicted of the five murders he's previously been aquited of and he's acquitted of the one murder he's never been tried for before. smitty's the only person in my experience and i think probably in the entire world who has been quatd of every single murder he's 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, they're trying to kill people. no less than hall and hawley killed people. that's what smitty was trying to say. they're trying to kill me. instead of using a bomb, they're trying to use those four witnesses. >> even though the battle in smitty's case was fundamentally unfair, i'm the one who did the trial and i'm the one who failed smitty, and that's something that i find quite difficult to live with.
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>> life without parole, the government's not going to dictate the rest of my life, my health is. how much longer i got, i have no idea. >> smitty, now 72 years old and suffering from emphysema, was sentenced to life in prison. he will likely die behind bars. >> i found out how far the government was going, not to just prosecute me but to prosecute our club. anything that the government can't control, can't infiltrate, they try to destroy. we're not gangsters, we're bikers. all you got to do is get on the motorcycle one time, get out on the open road, enjoy the scenery and the feeling. i can't even put words to it.
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when you get off, you've got to get back on and do it again. on this episode of "death row stories" -- >> she was found in the middle of the field, raped and sodomized. >> a young girl is murdered in a rural southern town. >> this was the most horrific case that had ever occurred. >> and two teenaged brothers are sentenced to death. >> brown and his brother would sign written confessions to the crime. >> but when confessions are called into question -- >> how can you get my brothers to sign something when they can't even halfway read? >> and hidden evidence uncovered. >> we're going to come search for ourselves. >> executions hang in the balance. >> i didn't commit this crime, but they're going to kill me. >> there's a body in the water. >> he was butchered and murdered.
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