Wayne Smith sentenced to death in Delaware County - again

Almost 20 years ago, Wayne Smith killed a Delaware County woman and was sentenced to death. Friday, when 12 new jurors were given a chance to decide his fate again on an appeal, they, too, chose death.

Their conclusion goes against the trend.

Statistically, about 95 percent of juries - both state and national - return with a sentence of less than life for cases in which the courts have reversed the original decision.

In May 1995, Smith, now 56, of Chester, was convicted of killing 26-year-old Eileen Marie Jones of Eddystone the previous November. The two met when she asked him to come to a friend's house to get high. Later they drove to a park to do more drugs, and he strangled her. Smith later confessed to police that he killed Jones.

At one point during the trial, County Court Judge Anthony R. Semeraro ordered one of Smith's defense attorneys handcuffed and locked in a courtroom holding cell for 45 minutes. Smith's lead defense attorney, Raymond Williams, asked to withdraw from "a proceeding so fundamentally flawed in constitutional procedure."

In 2010, the state Supreme Court ruled that while the guilty verdict in Smith's original trial could stand, his lawyer did not "pursue all reasonable avenues" for developing mitigating evidence - the facts about the defendant or his circumstances that might compel a juror to vote for a lesser penalty. The court ordered a new hearing for the death-penalty phase.

The penalty-phase retrial began Monday before Judge James P. Bradley. Prosecutors offered a deal for life in prison, but Smith rejected it because he would have to agree to halt all further appeals.

In childhood, Smith and his six younger siblings were routinely abused by their alcoholic father. Food and heat were in short supply. A sister was sexually abused. Their mother, Rosalie, was often choked and beaten.

By age 13, Wayne Smith had started down the road to drugs and alcohol. He spent time in a juvenile facility. He joined the National Guard, then the Army, but was dishonorably discharged. He tried and failed at several jobs.

"This is a man who never had a chance," said William Wismer, Smith's attorney, in his closing argument Friday to the jury of six men and six women.

Jones' murder was not Smith's first serious run-in with the law. In 1980, he pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter after he killed a man outside a Chester bar with a machete. He served four years.

"Lots of people have horrible fathers," said Assistant District Attorney Mary Mann in her closing. "They don't kill multiple people."

After 61/2 hours, the Delaware County jurors returned the guilty verdict.

The likelihood Smith will be put to death any time soon is slim. There have been only three executions in Pennsylvania since 1976.

"Basically, you have this awkward way of getting to a life sentence in Pennsylvania," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington. "Instead of getting it directly through a plea or trial, you get it through 15 years of death-penalty appeals."

Ed Martin, the victim's father, sat stoically in court for most of the proceedings. He knows the odds are that Smith will not face execution.

"I'm satisfied because now he is on death row," Martin said.