George Smithey Hangs Himself Days After Death Sentence Lifted

[Dakota Valkyrie]

A 70-year-old California inmate who had just had his death sentence lifted has hanged himself in his cell less than a week after the reprieve.

San Quentin State Prison spokesman Lt. Sam Robinson said that a guard found George Smithey on Saturday hanging from a noose made from bed sheets tied around his cell bars.

A Calaveras County judge overturned Smithey's death sentence Aug. 23, more than 20 years after he was convicted of killing a woman there during a 1988 break-in.

The judge ruled that Smithey was mentally retarded under state standards set years after his trial and therefore ineligible for the death penalty. His sentence was commuted to life without parole.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...Z2MYMgD9HU98GO

It's the first time the State of California has given a convict an intelligence test, and found him not smart enough to be put to death.

Meanwhile, the story of George Hatton Smithey had been lingering in the hills of Calaveras County like an echo from a bad dream. Smithey had killed and robbed to feed a methamphetamine addiction. And the family of his victim was worried they'd never get closure. Their concerns only grew stronger when Smithey was found to be mentally incompetent to be subjected to execution.

But the final chapter would be written by George Smithey himself.
[...]

"The Judge sentenced him… and he, Smithey, turned to me and said 'this ain't the end of this.' But I guess it is," said Glenda Hampton. She is the same age of Smithey, and the mother of his victim. She's quick to show you a picture of her daughter Cheryl… at about age five, she guesses, judging by the missing front tooth.

Cheryl two kids of her own by the time Smithey robbed, raped, and fatally stabbed her.

"It' wasn't for revenge that I wanted the death penalty,' says Hampton. "It's just… she was our only daughter. And her two kids were right there. And you know what was a terrible thing too? He had name for the knife he used on my daughter. He called it 'Old Babe.'"

Despite excruciating detail like that, Glenda Hampton went to every hearing, including the one in 1989 when Smithey waas sentenced to San Quentin's death row. She was also there for the hearing last Monday, when Smithey's learned that he'd be leaving death row.
[...]

There was no suicide note. That last thing we hear from Smithey is 7 years ago, on the internet he posts an add looking for a pen-pal, or "pen-friend" as he calls it.

"After twenty years on Death row, it truly! [sic] does get lonely," Smithey writes.

Hampton believes Smithey feared his life could have been harder if he had been put in a prison's general population. The State of California Department of Corrections hadn't yet decided where they would place Smithey, so Smithey wouldn't have known either by the time he died.

But corrections officials say, in all likelihood, he would have been placed in general population.

http://www.fox40.com/news/headlines/...,4953519.story

[gee]

Well one less convict the tax payers have to take care of.