CHOP doc's accused killer cries on stand, says he gave false confession
In tearful testimony, Jason Smith contended that detectives wrung a false confession out of him in a closet interrogation room.
JASON SMITH choked up as he recounted his last moments as a free man, the moments before police stormed his family's Levittown home and arrested him for a grisly Southwest Center City murder of a doctor that he says he did not commit.
Testifying in his own defense yesterday, Smith, 39, said he and his fiancee were in a bedroom putting their daughter, now 6, to sleep on the night of Jan. 23, 2013, when he heard banging at the door and police burst into the house and shot Tyson, the family's boxer, before handcuffing Smith.
Smith is charged with first-degree murder and related offenses for allegedly strangling Children's Hospital of Philadelphia pediatrician Melissa Ketunuti, 35, and then binding her and setting her body ablaze during a visit to her house on an exterminating job Jan. 21, 2013.
Under questioning by his attorney, J. Michael Farrell, Smith told the jury of six women and six men that detectives who came into the house told him, "You know why we're here," cuffed him and isolated him in a separate room.
"I say, 'I don't know, she was alive when I left,' " Smith recounted. Prosecutors Peter Lim and Jennifer Selber have contended that Smith's statement was made without prompting by police.
Smith described more than five grueling hours he spent being questioned by detectives in a room at the Homicide Unit that he described as "a closet." He said that at one point, Detective Ohmarr Jenkins - who questioned him with Detective Edward Tolliver - manhandled him.
"I guess Mr. Tolliver got fed up, and he had me stand up," Smith said, again choking up. "That's when Mr. Jenkins grabbed my shirt and started slamming me into the wall."
Smith contended that he eventually broke down and gave a false confession.
"He asked me what I would do if that was [my] daughter, and I just started crying," said Smith, who also testified that yesterday was his son's 13th birthday. "I didn't know what to say . . . toward the end, I did [confess], because I just wanted them to stop."
When Farrell asked how Smith knew details of Ketunuti's gruesome murder to recount in his confession, Smith responded that he had repeated what he'd gleaned from the photos and information the detectives had given him during questioning.
"They had my kids, they had [my fiancee] Shannon, and they weren't gonna stop until they got what they wanted," Smith said, breaking down.
His fiancee, Shannon Mooney, testified earlier yesterday for the defense, describing her horror when police raided her home and arrested Smith. Prosecutors questioned her about a recorded phone call she'd had with Smith while he was jailed, in which he told her that he was smart not to have his confession video-recorded. Farrell argued that Smith simply had been repeating information he'd heard from others.
Smith's testimony in front of a packed gallery came after a two-hour delay in the afternoon during which attorneys and Judge Sandy L.V. Byrd had a series of conversations in the judge's chambers.
When Farrell finished questioning Smith about 4:55 p.m., Byrd told jurors to decide whether they wanted to stay to hear his cross-examination or to wait and continue today.
They decided to go home for the night. Smith's testimony is to resume this morning.