David Smith

Case record

David Smith was sentenced to death in 1983.

Background

Smith was angered because his girlfriend ended their relationship. Smith was convicted in 1983 of the Pike County murders of his teen-age girlfriend, her daughter, the girlfriend's mother, and the girlfriend's sister.

Smith’s lawyers contended that he was under the influence of drugs when the murders took place. Smith apologized for the killings.

The offence

In 1980, Smith executed a quadruple execution in Pike County with a gun.

Smith shot and killed his girlfriend’s mother, Mary Thompson, 48, and his girlfriend’s sister, Betty Maynard, 27, with a hunting rifle after a falling out with the girlfriend. While emergency medical workers were treating those victims, Smith returned and shot his 17-year-old girlfriend, Becky Church. One bullet left her body and struck her 18-month-old daughter, Amanda Church, killing her.

Victims:

• Mary Thompson, 48
• Betty Maynard, 27
• Becky Church, 17
• Amanda Church, 18 months

Arrest

Smith confessed at the scene of the quadruple execution.

Trial

Sentencing

Smith received a death sentence in 1983.

Appeals

A federal judge blocked a planned execution and stayed it so that courts could consider the issues raised in a federal appeal.

A U.S. District Judge Joseph Hood had refused to grant Smith a stay so his lawyers would have more time to file a federal appeal. Smith’s lawyer rushed to file a 323-page appeal with the court. Hood stayed the execution until courts had time to consider the issues it raised. The stay meant Smith was probably years away from execution, even though he had not yet exhausted his appeals.

The federal anti-terrorism bill, designed to streamline death-penalty appeals, allowed federal appeals to be filed within one year of state appeals being exhausted. The Department of Public Advocacy took that to mean death-row inmates should receive an automatic 12-month stay of execution while their lawyers worked on appeals, while the attorney general’s office contended that the provision meant only that defense lawyers had to file such an appeal within a year. Hood sided with the attorney general’s office and refused earlier that week to stay Smith’s execution.

Smith had been turned down in the 1st 2 levels of the appeals process and was at the 1st step of the 3rd and final level.

Outcome

Attorney General Ben Chandler asked Gov. Paul Patton to sign a death warrant in early May, less than a month after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear one of Smith’s earlier appeals. Patton signed the death warrant May 11.

The scheduled time for execution had been 7 a.m. Tuesday in the death chamber of the Kentucky State Penitentiary at Eddyville. Officials at Eddyville had already begun preparing for the execution. The Kentucky Press Association began the process of deciding what newspaper reporters would witness the execution.

Corey Bellamy, a spokesman for Chandler, said the attorney general sought the death warrant to keep the appeals process from stalling while waiting for Smith to file his next appeal.

Rebecca Ballard DiLoreto, Smith’s lawyer with the state Department of Public Advocacy, scrambled to assemble the appeal and get it filed in U.S. District Court in Frankfort in hopes of delaying the execution until federal courts had an opportunity to review the case. DiLoreto had asked Hood to stay the execution while she and attorney Steve Pence of Louisville completed the appeal.

Smith’s execution was not likely to take place on the planned date because there were still appeals pending.

Other details

Since taking office in 1996, Chandler’s policy had been to seek death warrants as soon as the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the condemned at each level, which Chandler said kept the process moving and did not allow defense lawyers to delay. Although governors in the past had generally waited 90 days for defense lawyers to perfect their appeals, Patton had signed death warrants quickly.

A Maynard family member in Pike County declined on behalf of the victims’ family to comment.