A Tennessee med­ical exam­in­er who helped con­vict about a third of the state’s death row inmates has been indict­ed for fak­ing an attack in which he was strapped with a home­made bomb around his neck. Dr. O’Brian Smith was found in 2002 wrapped head to toe in barbed wire and bound to win­dow bars in his office, an inci­dent inves­ti­ga­tors first believed was car­ried out by those who were angry with Smith for help­ing to con­vict Philip Workman and oth­er inmates on Tennessee’s death row. The indict­ment against Dr. Smith accus­es him of lying to agents and unlaw­ful pos­ses­sion of a bomb, charges that car­ry a max­i­mum penal­ty of 20 years in prison.

According to Don Dawson, Tennessee’s chief post-con­vic­tion defend­er, Dr. Smith had com­plet­ed the autop­sies, super­vised the autop­sies, or tes­ti­fied dur­ing tri­al in 30 to 40 per­cent of the state’s cap­i­tal cas­es. Of the state’s 97 death row inmates, 38 were con­vict­ed in Shelby County where Smith practices.

A few hours after his indict­ment by a fed­er­al grand jury, Dr. Smith pro­vid­ed tes­ti­mo­ny in anoth­er on-going mur­der case. Dr. Cyril H. Wecht, the chief med­ical exam­in­er in Pittsburgh and pres­i­dent of the American Board of Legal Medicine, not­ed, ​“If he could fab­ri­cate a sto­ry like this that a Hollywood screen­writer on LSD would have dif­fi­cul­ty com­ing up with, who can believe him in the court­room?” When Dr. Smith came under inves­ti­ga­tion in 2003, Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen issued an 11th-hour stay of exe­cu­tion to death row inmate Philip Workman, whose clemen­cy request was denied dur­ing pro­ceed­ings that fea­tured Dr. Smith’s expert tes­ti­mo­ny. It is expect­ed that oth­er death row inmates will file chal­lenges based on Dr. Smith’s involve­ment in their pros­e­cu­tion. (New York Times and Washington Post, February 12, 2004) See TCASK Press Release.
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