Stay denied
The bill is not expected to even be heard on the House floor.
Smith faces execution for two 2002 murders. He claims he is innocent even though he confessed to police. His attorneys also claim he is intellectually disabled.
The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board voted 4-1 March 6 to deny him clemency.
Smith told the parole board he was hallucinating from his drug use when he confessed to police. “I didn’t commit these crimes. I didn’t kill these people. I was high on drugs,” he said.
Smith was convicted at trial of firstdegree murder for two fatal shootings in Oklahoma City on Feb. 22, 2002. Jurors agreed he should be executed for both deaths.
The first victim, Janet Moore, 40, was shot once at her apartment. The second victim, Sharath Babu Pulluru, 24, was shot nine times at a convenience store then doused with lighter fluid and set on fire.
Neither was Smith’s original target, according to testimony at the 2003 trial.
At the time, he was 19 and a member of a street gang in Oklahoma City known as the Oak Grove Posse. He also was high on PCP and hiding from police, who had a warrant for his arrest on a 2001 murder case.
In the first shooting, Smith was looking for Moore’s son, Phillip Zachary, because he mistakenly thought Zachary was a snitch, prosecutors said.
“It’s her fault she died,” he told police. “She panicked and she got shot. ... She like, ‘Help! Help!’ ... I had to. I had no choice.”
Smith next went to the A&Z Food Mart to shoot a worker over comments to the newspaper about a robbery at another food mart next door, prosecutors said. He instead killed Pulluru.
A clerk at the Trans Food Mart had killed a fellow gang member during a robbery Nov. 8, 2000. A worker at the A&Z Food Mart had told The Oklahoman in 2000 he was proud of his neighbor.
“The rest of the kids will learn a lesson by him being dead and stop doing these things,” the A&Z Food Mart worker had said.
The shootings in 2002 came days before a trial for two other gang members involved in the robbery was set to begin. Smith confessed to his roommate and a neighbor before his arrest, according to their testimony at his trial.
Smith also had asked for a stay of his execution as he seeks DNA testing on evidence from the A&Z Food Mart in support of his innocence claim. The Court of Criminal Appeals denied that request Monday in a separate order.
Smith was convicted at a separate trial of second-degree murder for the fatal shooting of Otis Payne outside an Oklahoma City club Nov. 24, 2001. He admitted to police that he handed the gun to the shooter, David Burns. He was sentenced to life in prison for that crime.