Murder defendant Anita Smithey confided to a friend that the night she killed her estranged husband, they had played "date rape" with a knife, the friend told jurors
[...]
Toraina Stewart, a friend who took in Smithey after her arrest, said that Smithey told her that Robert Cline III like to role play "date rape," that they did it more than once and that they used a pocket knife
[...]
They did that the night Smithey shot Cline, Stewart said the defendant told her, and they used a knife.
[...]
Stewart also testified that Smithey told her the game had ended earlier in the evening, that Cline then turned violent, frightening her and raped her.
Smithey, 46
[...]
charged with second-degree murder. She says she killed Cline May 4, 2010, in self-defense while he was raping her.
Prosecutors contend that she and Cline had consensual sex, that she killed Cline because he refused to go home then she spent at least an hour coming up with the rape story and staging the crime scene – her bedroom - before she called for help.
During that gap, she stabbed herself in the side
[.....]
She told Oviedo police that, yes, she did stab herself but that was during an interrogation in which they repeatedly made that accusation.
[...]
has since called that a false confession, saying she caved in to police pressure.
Just before the lunch break, Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester Jr. ruled that prosecutors could play that portion of the videotaped interrogation for jurors.
[....]
a firefighter told jurors that Smithey pretended to cry in the ambulance as she was being taken from the house where she had just killed her estranged husband.
"In layman's terms, crocodile tears," said Peter Faraci, a retired
[....]
firefighter.
[...]
told jurors that when he checked Cline for a pulse, "He was cold."
[....]
also testified that the blood on the floor near Cline's head and neck had coagulated.
Cline was face-down on the bedroom floor, Faraci said, and Smithey was on the sidewalk outside.
When he first saw her, she was "sobbing and breathing heavily,"
[...]
She had a stab wound to her side that was 2 inches wide and 1/8 inch deep,
[...]
A photo of her at South Seminole Hospital shows a bloody piece of gauze over the wound.
[...]
testified that after she was loaded into his ambulance, she appeared to hyperventilate and pass out, but he suggested that was an act.
[....]
prosecutors showed jurors a string of text messages that Cline sent Smithey in the days leading up to the homicide. In them he apologized for the breakup of their marriage, asked her for a date and sent repeated messages, asking her to let him come over.
Smithey has portrayed Cline as a controlling, abusive, sex-obsessed man. She moved out three months before the homicide, but they kept in touch and on Mondays got together for sex
[...]
The Monday before the homicide, Cline texted or called her more than 30 times, according to defense attorney Rick Jancha.
[....]
say that by showing jurors the couple's text messages, panel members will see that Cline and Smithey were sometimes playful, that Cline tried to be helpful, for example offered to pick up things at the store for her, and offered to go to counseling.
"Still wanna date nite…?" he texted her on April 24.
[....]
days later, he accused her of picking a fight with him because he had had a phone conversation with another woman.
"I don't want to fight," he wrote. "I just wntd to say I'm sorry …. Xoxo."
But the messages also show that a few hours before the slaying, Cline sent Smithey text messages asking her to let him come over, and she said no.
Jurors did not see them but the night he was killed, Cline also was texting another woman, - "Hey, beautiful" - asking her for a date and making a reference to multiple orgasms.
You must be logged in to see or use the Shoutbox. Besides, if you haven't registered, you really should. It's quick and it will make your life a little better. Trust me. So just register and make yourself at home with like-minded individuals who share either your morbid curiousity or sense of gallows humor.
