Settlement in killer’s civil case
Lemuel Smith, 82, to be removed from restrictive custody
ALBANY — Attorneys for Capital Region serial killer Lemuel Smith reached a settlement Friday with Attorney General Letitia James’ office to resolve Smith’s federal lawsuit alleging he has been unconstitutionally kept in solitary confinement in New York prisons for nearly 40 years.
The parties agreed to the 11thhour settlement as Smith, 82, was headed to a jury trial in Rochester on Monday before Chief U.S. District Judge Elizabeth A. Wolford of the Western District of New York. As a result of the settlement, the trial was canceled.
The Times Union first reported Tuesday that Smith’s represented by attorneys Tracy Burnett and Jonathan R. Jeremias, were suing retired state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision commissioner Anthony Annucci and retired commissioners Joseph Bellnier and James O’gorman, asking that Smith to be placed in less restrictive surroundings in prison. They said Smith is now immobile and uses a wheelchair, posing no threat within the prison system.
“We are very pleased with today’s resolution and have achieved Lemuel’s goal of being removed from restrictive custody,” Burnett and Jeremias, partners with the Manhattan law firm of Mclaughlin & Stern, told the Times Union in a statement. “This determination is long overdue but thankfully gives some closure to the decades of injustice our client endured.”
The settlement will be finalized by March 8.
Smith, an Amsterdam native whose known violent crimes stretched from the Capital Region to Baltimore, slashed the throats of Robert Hedderman and Margaret Byron inside a religious store on Columbia Street in Albany on Thanksgiving Eve in 1976. Smith would later be indicted for the kidnapping and stabbing murder of Joan Richburg at Colonie Cen
ter in December 1976 and knifing murder of Marilee Wilson in Schenectady in July 1977.
Smith was serving two 25 years to life sentences in Green Haven Correctional Facility in Dutchess County when, in 1981, he overpowered and fatally strangled 31-year-old correction officer Donna Payant in a prison chaplain’s office. He wrapped her up in garbage bags and discarded her remains in a garbage drum that was later trucked to a landfill in the town of Amenia and found 20 hours later. That crime, for which Smith was to receive the death sentence before it was overturned, landed Smith a 15-year term in disciplinary segregation, which was followed by his placement in administrative segregation and then involuntary protective custody.
Smith’s attorneys argued that their client was being wrongly locked in his cell 23 hours a day,with little to no religious, social or educational interactions. They said while state regulations required Smith’s administrative segregation be reviewed every 60 days, DOCCS officials continuously rubber-stamped his denials without proper cause.
Neither James’ office nor DOCCS had an immediate comment on the settlement.
Assistant Attorney General Hillel Deutsch, who handled the matter for James, said in court filings that Smith had received regular, timely, and substantive reviews, and was released from administrative segregation when the consensus of security experts was that Smith was no longer a substantial risk to staff or other inmates.