On April 23, Judge Lee S. Alford, Chief Administrative Judge for the Sixteenth Judicial Circuit, issued a final order dismissing Smith’s application for post-conviction relief in the form of a new trial. The ruling was a follow-up to a conditional dismissal Alford issued in February in which he gave Smith 20 days to show why her application should not be dismissed in its entirety.
In issuing the final order, Alford states Smith did not respond within the 20 day response period. Alford writes a review of Smith’s original pleadings found that “sufficient reason has not been shown why the Conditional Order of Dismissal should not beccome final.” Alford ordered that “for the reasons set forth in Court’s Conditional Order of Dismissal, this application for post-conviction relief is hereby denied and dismissed with prejudice.”
Smith attracted worldwide attention by claiming her sons Michael, 3, and Alex, 18 months, had been kidnapped by a carjacker on Oct. 25, 1994. Nine days later, however, she admitted there was no carjacking and that she had driven to John D. Long Lake and left the little boys inside the car as she let it roll into the water.
In 1995, Smith was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of her sons. She is serving her sentence at the Leith Correctional Institute in Greenwood. Smith must serve 30 years of her sentence before being eligible for parole.
Smith applied for post-conviction relief in January, seeking a new trial within 180 days; the lifting of her life sentence; and parole eligibility every year. She claimed she deserved such relief on the grounds of:
• Fifth Amendment violation;
• Prosecutorial misconduct;
• Ineffective assistance of counsel including her attorney refusing to enter a guilty plea and failure to request jury charges for or raise issues about Battered Women’s Syndrome, Childhood Trauma and Domestic Violence.
In his conditional dismissal, Alford rejected these claims on the grounds that Smith did not file her post-conviction relief appeal within the one-year period allowed under law; that she failed to raise the issues of Fifth Amendment violation and/or prosecutorial misconduct during the trial or on direct appeal; and that on Aug. 8, 1996, she withdrew an appeal filed on her behalf in 1995 by her attorney.
Alford pointed to an affidavit by Smith’s appellate counsel in which she stated she discussed Smith’s rights with her and that Smith was unequivocal in her decision to withdraw after being fully advised of the consequences.
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