Federal appeals court rejects Willie B. Smith's arguments, won't halt scheduled execution

A three-judge federal panel Thursday denied an Alabama death row inmate's request for a stay of execution, ruling that he had not shown a lower court erred in allowing his execution to proceed.

In a 10-page opinion, U.S. Circuit Judge Charles Wilson rejected arguments from attorneys for Willie B. Smith III, convicted of the 1991 murder of Sharma Ruth Johnson, that the state had conceded that Smith needed accommodations to understand that he could have chosen an alternate method of execution in 2018. 

Wilson also wrote that U.S. District Judge Emily Marks had applied "the correct legal standard" in finding that Smith was unlikely to prevail in a challenge under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

"Mr. Smith has not shown that any of these factual findings rise to the level of being clearly erroneous," Wilson wrote. "Nor does the record indicate that the district court followed improper procedures or applied the incorrect legal standards to its factual findings." 

The state set Smith's execution for 6 p.m. Thursday. Smith's attorneys filed a stay of execution request with the U.S. Supreme Court shortly before 4 p.m., in addition to petitioning the high court to review the lower court's ruling. Alabama opposed the emergency application. At press time, the Supreme Court had not yet responded to the filings. 

A jury convicted Smith of Johnson's murder in 1992. Court records say that Smith and a companion kidnapped Johnson and put her in the trunk of a car, then forced her to recite her ATM password to take money from her account. Smith shot Johnson in the trunk of the car, then set it on fire. 

More:

• Who was Sharma Ruth Johnson? What we know about the murder of a 22-year-old Alabama woman in 1991
• Alabama death row case highlights intellectual disabilities in capital punishment

The presiding judge at Smith's trial noted that he had intellectual disabilities; Smith's attorneys say he has an IQ between 64 and 72. But he concurred with the death sentence recommended by the jury. The U.S. Supreme Court banned executions of the intellectually disabled in 2002, but Smith was not been successful in having his sentence overturned on those grounds. 

In 2018, Alabama authorized the use of nitrogen hypoxia as an alternate execution method. Death row inmates had a brief window to choose death by that method. In interviews with the Advertiser in 2019, several described a rushed process, where inmates raced to contact attorneys to determine what course to take. 

Smith's attorneys argued that he could not understand the choice presented to him and that under the ADA, the state should have provided him accommodations to understand it. The Alabama attorney general's office said the Department of Corrections had followed the law in giving inmates the option, and that Smith had never shown he would have chosen the alternate method. 

In a concurring opinion, U.S. Circuit Judge Jill Pryor wrote that she was "bound by law" to join the majority. But Pryor added that she was "confounded by the Alabama Department of Corrections’ (ADOC) insistence that Mr. Smith be put to death immediately by lethal injection."

"ADOC ostensibly intended to inform Mr. Smith of his right to choose death by nitrogen hypoxia," she wrote. "Mr. Smith intended to exercise that right, but because of his disability, he was unable to do so. ADOC has acknowledged that it could, if ordered to do it, give Mr. Smith another chance to make the election. Under these circumstances, I cannot silently acquiesce in the State’s refusal to afford Mr. Smith this final dignity."

Contact Montgomery Advertiser reporter Brian Lyman at 334-240-0185 or blyman@gannett.com.