DPI’s Podcast 12:01 The Death Penalty in Context: Sabrina Butler-Smith on Wrongful Convictions and Motherhood

In this month’s pod­cast episode of 12:01 The Death Penalty in Context, DPI’s Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Sabrina Butler-Smith (pic­tured), who was wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death at age 17 for caus­ing the death of her nine-month-old son. After two years and nine months on death row, Ms. Butler-Smith’s con­vic­tion was over­turned. At a sec­ond tri­al, it was deter­mined that her son died from a seri­ous med­ical con­di­tion, poly­cys­tic kid­ney dis­ease, and she was acquit­ted. Since her exon­er­a­tion, Ms. Butler-Smith has become an advo­cate against wrong­ful con­vic­tions and works with Witness to Innocence, an orga­ni­za­tion of death row exonerees, for death row exonerees.

Ms. Butler-Smith dis­cuss­es how her infant son stopped breath­ing because of the then-undi­ag­nosed med­ical con­di­tion, and how, despite her efforts to seek help and save him with CPR, he died. Later, after four hours of inter­ro­ga­tion by police, with­out her par­ents or an attor­ney present, and with­out a true under­stand­ing of her rights, Ms. Butler-Smith was coerced into sign­ing a false con­fes­sion in which she admit­ted to killing her son. She said that she ​“under­stood you have the right to remain silent, but I thought it meant ​‘be qui­et until spo­ken to,’ because I had nev­er been in trou­ble before.” Ms. Butler-Smith explains how even once she had coun­sel, they failed to ade­quate­ly rep­re­sent her: ​“I had two court appoint­ed attor­neys — one was drunk dur­ing the whole tri­al, but he was a divorce attor­ney. And then…the lead attor­ney just didn’t do the inves­tiga­tive work in the case. That’s why it turned out so hor­ri­bly and went so wrong.”

As the first women exon­er­at­ed from death row in the United States, Ms. Butler-Smith shared her expe­ri­ence on death row with only one oth­er women in Mississippi in the ear­ly 1990s: ​“It was hard because, at the time, they didn’t know what to do with us. They put us down a hall, with a piece of tape on the floor.” She also explains that her lack of under­stand­ing about how the sys­tem func­tioned left her in con­stant fear. Following the impo­si­tion of her death sen­tence, Mississippi announced her exe­cu­tion date, but she ​“wasn’t told that the state had to exhaust all state reme­dies before they could actu­al­ly car­ry out a death sen­tence.” Because of this, Ms. Butler-Smith was scared, and she said, ​“I lis­tened for every chain, every sound, because I actu­al­ly thought I was going to die.”

Ms. Butler-Smith also dis­cuss­es how gen­der and race inter­sect­ed in her case. ​“Being a young African American with an all-white jury, nobody looked like me, it’s the rea­son why they were so easy to judge,” Ms. Butler-Smith says. She explained the unique trau­ma faced by moth­ers accused of killing their chil­dren ​“because you’re car­ry­ing that child for nine months, and then you lose your baby, and then you’re sub­se­quent­ly con­vict­ed of killing your own child. It just cuts deep­er.” Since her acquit­tal and exon­er­a­tion in 1995, Ms. Butler-Smith has con­nect­ed with oth­er exon­er­at­ed women like Kristine Bunch and Debra Milke, who share the expe­ri­ence of being accused of harm­ing their chil­dren while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly griev­ing their loss.

After her acquit­tal, Ms. Butler-Smith faced the chal­lenge of heal­ing from two trau­mas: the loss of her son and her wrong­ful incar­cer­a­tion. ​“I lost my son. I nev­er got to grieve, and I was nev­er talked to in the first tri­al,” she reveals. And fol­low­ing her release, Ms. Butler-Smith spent two years attempt­ing to locate where her son had been buried, as nobody told her while she was incar­cer­at­ed. ​“It took me 10 years to get to where I’m at today, to be able to talk about what hap­pened,” she explains. Ms. Butler-Smith is in the process of com­plet­ing a book about her experiences.