An innocent Maryland man received an apology from the state and approval for a $340,000 settlement after he was wrongly convicted of two violent crimes and imprisoned for more than five years.
Demetrius Smith was wrongly convicted of first-degree assault and murder in 2008 when he was just 25. Smith spent more than five years in prison, including a full year after his innocence had been proven. More than 10 years after his 2013 release, he finally received an apology from Gov. Wes Moore, the state’s first Black governor, and the Board of Public Works.
Moore apologized directly to Smith on Sept. 20 during a Board of Public Works hearing to determine a compensation settlement, according to CBS News.
“We’re here today more than 10 years after he was released from incarceration, providing Mr. Smith with long overdue justice that he was deprived of, an apology from the state of Maryland that until today he’s never received,” said Moore. “I am deeply sorry for the fact that our justice system failed you not once, but our justice system failed you twice, and while no amount of money can make up for what was taken from you, the action this board is taking today represents a formal acknowledgment from the state for the injustice that was caused.”
Moore was arrested in Baltimore in 2008 and charged with killing Robert Long, a murder he did not commit, and despite the judge at his bail hearing saying the case was “probably the thinnest case” he’d ever seen, the prosecution moved forward with the case using testimony from a witness who was not even present at the scene of the crime. While out on bail, he was arrested for assault based on witness testimony that was later recanted. Smith was convicted of murder in 2010. He was sentenced to life in prison plus 18 years.
Smith entered an Alford plea in 2011 for the assault charge. An Alford plea allows a defendant to accept a conviction in exchange for a reduced sentence while also asserting their innocence. Because he’d already been convicted of a crime he did not commit once, Smith thought the Alford plea was the best-case scenario.
That year, the Maryland U.S. attorney’s office charged the person who committed the murder, and Smith was proven innocent of the crime. However, Smith was not released, and he sat in prison for another 1.5 years until the state dropped the charge in 2012.
Smith petitioned the court in May of 2013 to have his Alford plea for the assault charge dismissed after his murder conviction was dropped and a witness in the assault case recanted.
ProPublica reports Baltimore prosecutor Richard Gibson tried to block it, claiming that Judge Barry Williams had no authority to change Smith’s sentence. A new prosecutor in 2013 changed the 10-year sentence to time served and three years of probation, later reduced to probation. However, Smith found it difficult to find housing and employment with a record and said he had to “sit down and explain the whole story” to potential employers.
In 2018, Judge Williams finally wiped the shooting conviction from Smith’s record, saying that it was “in the interest of justice” and “there’s too much going on to leave it as is.”
Smith aptly noted that the conviction shouldn’t have been on his record in the first place. “I’m innocent. Period.”
Gibson argued against the judge’s ruling and argued that the sentence modification wasn’t in the best interest of the community. Judge Williams scolded Gibson for claiming that Smith’s two cases didn’t have any detectives in common, which was a lie.
Smith was allowed to address Gibson during the hearing.
“I sat in prison for five years,” Smith said while noting that Gibson “couldn’t even look me in the face. Tell me ‘I’m sorry.’”
“Humans make mistakes,” he said to Gibson before saying he couldn’t understand why the prosecutor didn’t do anything about it. “This whole situation is a mess, and all he had to do was say ‘sorry’ from the beginning when he knew he was wrong.”
Gibson did not respond to Smith in court or out of court.
According to the Baltimore Banner, the board approved $227,000 in compensation, with an additional $89,000 for housing assistance and $25,000 to pay his legal fees. Smith said in 2022 that he’d been waiting a long time for an apology.
“You know, that’s all I ever asked,” said Smith. “It’s not even about the money because that’s not going to bring back the time. We can’t get, I can’t get them years back ever. They gone.”
Read the full story at Atlanta Black Star.
