Psychiatrist Cynthia Smith, who served as a key wit­ness in the 1990 death penal­ty case against John Daniels of North Carolina, has recant­ed her tes­ti­mo­ny because state pros­e­cu­tors with­held impor­tant infor­ma­tion from her. ​“My tes­ti­mo­ny was erro­neous with gross errors. Not only did the pros­e­cu­tion fail to give me all the rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion, I did not look for the infor­ma­tion either,” White said in an affi­davit about the tes­ti­mo­ny she gave in her first and only cap­i­tal case. She added, ​“John Daniels used much more alco­hol and crack cocaine before the killing than the pros­e­cu­tion had led me to believe. All I was aware of was the he had had ​‘some wine’ before going to his aun­t’s house.” In 1990, White tes­ti­fied that Daniels was­n’t influ­enced by alco­hol or cocaine when he com­mit­ted the crime and that he showed no remorse for the mur­der. She was not told by pros­e­cu­tors that Daniels had tried to burn him­self after the crime or that he was drunk dur­ing the mur­der. She notes that this infor­ma­tion would have made a dif­fer­ence in her diag­no­sis of Daniels, who is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on November 14, 2003. Defense attor­neys for Daniels note that White’s affi­davit could weigh heav­i­ly if a court or North Carolina Governor Mike Easley agrees to exam­ine the case before the sched­uled exe­cu­tion. (Charlotte Observer, November 7, 2003) See Clemency.

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