If any human being has thought about any crime that ccould be committed against humanity, another human being somewhere has already committed the dastardly deed. My job as senior paralegal with the John T. Floyd Law Firm requires that I do a lot of research, both in the area of the law and into the general events that impact our society. More often than not, it is interesting, challenging work, but there are times when poring through volumes of court decisions on LexisNexis or other legal research sites I come across cases whose facts are so horrific they do stagger the soul.

            When I saw a January 19, 2010 Findlaw posting on the case Smith v. Bradshaw citing the 6^th Circuit Court of Appeals decision to uphold a defendant’s death sentence for the murder and rape of a six-month old baby, I did not want to open the link and read the facts of the case. But I know legal research is not for the “faint of heart.” In all my years of doing legal research for inmates during my practice of “jailhouse law” in the Louisiana prison system, I came across many horrific cases in those thousands of volumes of law books through which I researched—not to mention some of the clients I personally met and assisted during jailhouse lawyer days.

            But Steven Smith’s crime falls into a special category for the repulsive and depraved. One September evening in 1998, somewhere in the State of Ohio, Smith, the girlfriend (Keysha Fyre) with whom he was living, and Keysha’s two small children—two-year-old Ashley and six-month-old Autumn—visited a friend. Smith started drinking while visiting with the friend, consuming at least three beers. He picked up a 12-pack on the way home and drank one of them while driving back to Keysha’s apartment. When the couple arrived at the apartment, Keysha put her babies to bed and watched a little television with Smith before having sex with him. Keysha then went to bed at about 11:00 p.m. leaving Smith, a reputed alcoholic, to nurse his beers.

            At about 3:30 a.m. Smith awaken Keysha by placing Autumn’s naked body next to her in the bed. Alarmed, Keysha quickly realized that the baby was not breathing and accused Smith of killing the child. Smith grabbed an alarm clock and slung it across the room, screaming the baby was not dead. Keysha grabbed Autumn into her arms and took her damaged body, along with little Ashley, to a neighbor’s apartment, screaming all the while that Smith had killed the baby. Smith followed Keysha to the neighbor’s apartment, screaming out that he “didn’t do anything” and asking “why was [Keysha] fucking lying.” The neighbor did not open the door for him. According to another neighbor, Smith went into Keysha apartment, retrieved a trash bag, and threw it into a dumpster, all the while saying he did not do anything and that he was leaving.

            The police arrived at the scene and quickly ascertained there had been no forced entry into Keysha’s apartment. They found Autumn’s “pink baby sleeper” under the coffee table with Smith’s cutoffs and jeans nearby on the couch. The police also found piles of Autumn’s hair on the coffee table and pieces of her shredded diaper nearby on the floor. In the dumpster where the neighbor saw Smith throw the trash bag, they found ten empty beer cans and the rest of little Autumn’s diaper.

            “I didn’t do it, I didn’t do it,” Smith immediately told the police, almost too drunk to even stand up.

            The denials were not convincing but the evidence certainly was. Smith was arrested and charged with the rape and murder of a child under thirteen. The county coroner testified at Smith trial, telling the jury little Autumn died from “compression asphyxia and blunt trauma to the head.” Translated, as it was by the Sixth Circuit, Smith, for ten to thirty minutes, violently raped the six-month old baby “during which time the baby resisted the attack and Smith forcibly subdued her by forcing her face into a pillow, ripping out her hair, shaking her, and causing deadly blunt force trauma to her head.” As a result of this violent attack, the baby “suffered subarachnoid and retinal hemorrhages consistent with shaken baby impact syndrome, indicating that she had been restrained, and she was missing hair from the back of her head, suggesting the attacker had forcefully grasped it. Furthermore, her clitoris was red, her vagina was ten times the normal size for a baby her age, and there was a hemorrhage in her anus, all indicative of attempted penetration.”

            What do you say about a human being who could do such a thing to a helpless baby? Shortly after Smith was sentenced to death, a friend of his posted an online ad to a pen pal site catering to death row inmates, telling prospective admirers: “Steve is a very loving and caring person. He would love to hear from people. He is very lonely and just recently sentenced.”

            Steven Smith doesn’t want to hear from me. While I am opposed to the death penalty in principle, I will be the first to say “just desserts” when the State of Ohio elects to carry out Smith’s execution. There has never been a person executed (or lynched) in this country who deserved to be put to death more than the “very loving and caring” Steven Smith.

            And that’s all I have to say about the matter—and if you are opposed to the death penalty and don’t like my opinions on this matter, please keep your feelings to yourself or I will be forced to tell you what I really think about Steven Smith.

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data2/circs/6th/074305p.pdf

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-11-20/death-row-pen-pals/full/