Wake County, North Carolina Jury Hands Down Life Sentence in 6^th Consecutive Capital Trial

A Wake County North Carolina jury vot­ed on February 22 to sen­tence cap­i­tal defen­dant Travion Devonte Smith to life with­out parole, mak­ing Smith’s case the sixth con­sec­u­tive Wake County death penal­ty tri­al to end with a life sentence. 

Though Wake County was among the 2% of coun­ties respon­si­ble for a major­i­ty of inmates on U.S. death rows as of 2013, the coun­ty has not pro­duced any new death sen­tences since 2007. 

District Attorney Lorrin Freeman said that her office pur­sued the death penal­ty in Smith’s case because of ​“the bru­tal­i­ty of this mur­der.” Yet the jury need­ed just one hour to con­clude that the 38 mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors offered by the defense — includ­ing Smith’s trou­bled upbring­ing, aban­don­ment by his moth­er, and lack of access to men­tal health treat­ment he had been diag­nosed as need­ing — out­weighed the two aggra­vat­ing fac­tors the prosecution presented. 

Defense attor­ney Jonathon Broun also argued to the jury that Smith’s actions had been influ­enced by a charis­mat­ic, old­er, and more cul­pa­ble co-defen­dant, Ronald Anthony, and that Smith was ​“not even the worst of the worst when it comes to this trag­ic and heart­break­ing crime.” Prosecutors had per­mit­ted Anthony to plead guilty to first-degree mur­der in 2015 to avoid the death penalty. 

Freeman indi­cat­ed that the jury ver­dicts in recent Wake County cap­i­tal cas­es may be a sig­nal for her office to recon­sid­er pur­su­ing the death penal­ty. The jury ver­dicts reflect larg­er nation­al trends; in 2015, just 49 peo­ple were sen­tenced to death across the United States, a 40-year low that rep­re­sents an 84% drop from the peak of 315 death sen­tences in 1996. 

Broun said, ​“We can pun­ish peo­ple harsh­ly and seri­ous­ly for first-degree mur­der with­out using the death penalty.”