In a hearing set for Monday, an Alabama man, convicted when he was 18 for his part in a burglary resulting in one of his teen accomplices being fatally shot by police, will ask for his prison term to be significantly reduced.
Leroy Maxwell, the attorney for LaKeith Smith, now 24, who was found guilty in 2018 of felony murder, a controversial law, will argue that an “overflow of information” should have been but was not presented during Smith’s trial.
Judge Sibley Reynolds will hear the appeal from the lawyers and Smith, who originally was sentenced to 65 years behind bars. Three years ago, based on a legal technicality, that time was reduced to 55 years.
Judge Reynolds said he granted Monday’s hearing because Smith’s trial attorney did not effectively explain mitigating factors that should have been considered in the case and led to a less harsh sentence.
“I believe that there have just been too many miracles that have happened on the campaign for LaKeith, and we’re in a good place with the mitigation report. And we have the support of the DA, which is really important,” said Liliana Gonzalez, a leader of the #JusticeForLakeithSmith campaign.
Though they know it’s a long shot and unlikely to be granted, Smith’s supporters will ask the judge to release him.
District Attorney C.J. Robinson, a veteran prosecutor, also had charged Smith and his three co-defendants with felony murder.
Robinson’s support for a resentencing seemed to surprise Judge Reynolds, according to Daniel Forkkio, CEO of Represent Justice and a spokesman for the coalition supporting Smith. “The judge sort of listened, asked questions, was maybe a little taken aback by the level of consensus between the two sides,” Forkkio said.
Monday’s hearing comes as sentencing teens to what amounts to a lifetime in prison remains a hot-button issue and a target for justice reformers. The Tennessee Supreme Court, as one example, made that state the latest where such sentences are banned.
[Related: Tennessee ban on juvenile life sentences is latest to align with US Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling]
Attorney Maxwell did not respond to requests for comment. But, last November, he told Youth Today that a psychologist and a mitigation expert his legal team hired helped catalog information that wasn’t presented during Smith’s trial. Though they know it’s a long shot and unlikely to be granted, Smith’s supporters will ask the judge to release him.
When Brontina Smith heard that the same Alabama judge who’d sentenced her teen son to 65 years had granted the now-24-year-old a resentencing hearing, she thanked those who have campaigned for LaKeith Smith since 2020 on Instagram.
“We are closer,” Brontina Smith, LaKeith Smith’s mother, said, in that Feb. 22 video. “We see the door. We just haven’t had a chance to twist that knob yet.”
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Micah Danney’s byline also has appeared in the New York Daily News, WNYC, Sojourners, Newsweek, Mental Floss, the GroundTruth Project, The Times of Israel, Religion Unplugged and other publications.
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This story was corrected on March 21, 2023: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the age of LaKeith Smith when convicted and sentenced. He was 18 when convicted and 19 when sentenced. He was 15 on the day of the burglary and shooting.
