Corey Smith — the reputed leader of a notorious Liberty City drug gang who was convicted of multiple murders and sentenced to death 20 years ago — received a reprieve Sunday when prosecutors said they would no longer seek the death penalty at his resentencing.
It’s a case that has been in limbo for nearly a year as attorneys first grappled with the difficult task of changes to Florida’s death penalty law. They were also forced to circumvent the removal of the two lead prosecutors in the case for alleged misconduct. That was followed by moves by Smith’s lawyers to have the case dismissed altogether.
READ MORE: Miami-Dade prosecutor removes paradox from murder case: hero to some, villain to others
Then Sunday, after a series of controversial texts between Miami-Dade’s state’s attorney and the appellate judge who originally prosecuted the case and who testified at the resentencing were released, the state said it would no longer seek Smith’s death because too much time had passed. had passed and witnesses had dried up or died.
READ MORE: Miami judge’s toxic texts come back to bite her in crumbling death penalty case
“Forced to re-sentence due to judicial decisions, with the passage of time, and taking into account all of these factors, we do not feel that we have a sufficiently compelling case for presenting the death penalty to jurors,” wrote the public prosecutor’s office in the newspaper. a statement to the Miami Herald. The statement also said Smith’s attorneys and the court had been notified.
Smith’s attorney Allison Miller, who is trying to overturn Smith’s murder convictions, called Smith “complicated” and said he is far more “good than bad.”
“Honestly,” Miller said, “he’s one of the most generous and certainly smartest clients I’ve ever had. And he is an integral part of his family and got his son out of prison.”
Smith’s next hearing before Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Andrea Ricker Wolfson is scheduled for Wednesday morning.
RICO conviction leads to the death penalty
Smith was first convicted in federal court in 1999 on drug and gun charges. A year later, a Miami-Dade grand jury indicted Smith and seven others on 17 counts of crimes committed in connection with Liberty City’s violent John Doe drug ring — named for the toe tags attached to unidentified bodies in the morgue.
In 2004, Miami-Dade jurors found Smith guilty of the murders of Cynthia Brown, Angel Wilson, Leon Hadley and Jackie Pope and the manslaughter deaths of Melvin Lipscomb and Marlon Beneby, in a case that launched the careers of several young Miami prosecutors -Dade got things going. . Smith was accused of ordering most of the deaths and personally participating in the drive-by shooting of Hadley.
Law enforcement officers swarmed the courthouse during the high-profile murder trial in which Smith was required to wear a stun belt every day in case he tried to escape. A year later he was sentenced to death.
But as Smith fought for his life over the years, the case remained embroiled in a legal system that changed the rules regarding the death penalty several times. The sentencing phase of Smith’s cases and others were first retried in 2016, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Florida’s death penalty law unconstitutional and said a unanimous jury was needed before a death sentence could be handed down.
While prosecutors attempted to retry those cases, that ruling would be overturned in Florida due to a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland two years later. In 2023, after convicted shooter Nikolas Cruz’s life was spared by jurors, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a new law in the state that required only a two-thirds majority of jurors to impose a death sentence.
Yet a new conviction was necessary. For Smith and others originally sentenced to death in Florida by non-unanimous juries, the court ruling and the legislative response have been a roller coaster ride that has embroiled their cases in the legal system for nearly a decade.
Smith’s new conviction has consequences
Smith’s reconviction, which was controversial from the start, has exposed prosecutors to withering criticism from defense attorneys and some ethics experts. In March, lead prosecutor Michael Von Zamft and co-counsel Stephen Mitchell were removed from the case by Wolfson.
The judge was outraged after learning during prison phone conversations between von Zamft and a state witness of an apparent attempt to use a prison traitor to boost stories between potential witnesses. Defense attorneys have consistently accused prosecutors of hiding evidence or failing to turn it over in a timely manner.
The revelations uncovered other murder convictions linked to the same prison informant. In July, prosecutors agreed to vacate Taji Pearson’s murder conviction and life sentence, and he will be released next summer. The attorney for Jimmy Washington, also convicted based on the jailhouse informant’s testimony, also wants his conviction and sentence overturned. Both were involved in the 2010 murder of 15-year-old Sabrina O’Neil.
And the case has also proven to be a major embarrassment for the person who may have benefited most from Smith’s 2005 conviction: 3rd District Court Judge Bronwyn Miller. Judge Miller, the lead prosecutor in the Smith case, would later receive appointments to the Circuit Court and the 3rd DCA.
Earlier this year, Miller testified at Smith’s resentencing and said she spoke to witnesses daily at Miami police headquarters or in a jury room during the original trial. And when she learned that some of them were being fed and given cigarettes, she told the court that Miller wrote a memo about it.
But what has come into question about her testimony is a series of texts between the appellate judge and Miami-Dade State’s Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle. In several texts, Miller appears to pressure the prosecutor about how the case against Smith should be handled.
She denigrates lawyers and urges Fernandez Rundle to try to remove Wolfson from the case after Von Zamft was fired.
She also told the prosecutor that the recent appointment of a public defender from Daytona Beach to train prosecutors was a mistake that could lead to her being removed from her elected post. The lawyer resigned in August, two months after taking office, after the Herald reported that he had recently published a sex novel filled with sexual violence and misogyny.
“They play by different rules,” Miller texted. “No lawyer should have to undergo training [assistant state attorneys]. It has to be someone who knows that prosecutors hold themselves to a higher standard of ethics.”
And in another text, the appellate judge told Fernandez Rundle that Von Zamft’s appointment to the case was also a mistake.
