Murderers that didn t take a life - The Times Gazette timesgazette.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from timesgazette.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
During the three years that Brontina Smith’s son spent in Alabama’s Elmore County Jail awaiting trial, he packed about 50 pounds onto what had been a 135-pound frame.
“So, now, it’s not letting the jury see that they’re dealing with a child,” said the mother of LaKeith Smith, who was 15 in February 2015 when he and a group of boys were caught burglarizing a home just outside of Montgomery.
After a watchful neighbor called 9-1-1, Millbrook Police Department officers arrived. There was an exchange of gunfire, police said. An officer shot and killed A’Donte Washington, one of the boy burglars, and later was cleared of wrongdoing.
LaKeith Smith, under Alabama’s felony murder law allowing prosecutors to charge a person considered an accomplice to a crime, was faulted for his friend’s death. No evidence that the teen fired or possessed a gun was presented during the trial.
Smith, now 23, should never have been in that group of boys, his mother said, making
Jagger Freeman was unarmed and outside when police responded to an attempted robbery and fired 44 shots, killing one of their own. Because he acted as the lookout, Freeman was convicted of the officer's murder.