out of the two people, which would had the best training and the ability of doing explosive work? holley said that smitty had that experience from his time in the military. narrator: karl holley described how he carried out the hit with smitty. holley and smith went to jacksonville and met with another biker who provided the c-4. he brought out a three-foot stick of the explosive, they cut off a foot of it and they started a continuous drive to new orleans to conduct the hit. they went back to collins house that night. smith said, drop me off and pick me up in a few minutes, i ll take care of it. narrator: holley said smitty then shimmied under collins truck and wired explosives to the brake lights. they went to a motel and waited. around 7:30 that sunday morning when robert lee collins was backing out of his driveway in his pickup truck, he tapped the brakes.
lunch time and ask the waiter what it was that judge shea was working, and the waiter said it was vodka tonic and he had been drinking a lot of them. so obviously the first thing he did was going to judge shea and tell him a bunch of liberal people were counting the number of drinks he was having. so judge shea came into court after lunch furious with me, and so he had come up with this plan, which was to announce that he was biased against smitty and that he was biased against us as his lawyers, so he took himself off the case, which, of course, was exactly what i wanted to happen. narrator: but even with a new judge, clive and tom knew they would have to discredit the government s witnesses, j.j. hall and karl holley. i said in court that hall and holley, were both of them facing the death penalty along with thousands of years in prison. so they re sitting there saying, hmm, on the one hand i get to
about em. narrator: smitty s trial began in february 1985, and the main witnesses against smitty would be two fellow outlaw bikers from florida. these men had given the government information about the collins murder in exchange for reduced sentences in their other crimes. the main witnesses that the state relied upon were j.j. hall and karl holley. both were members of the outlaws motorcycle gang in florida. narrator: smitty felt hall and holley had it in for him because he demoted them after a clubhouse altercation. j.j. hall and karl holley made a deal with the feds to put the finger on smitty. i ll give you the boss, that was their thinking. narrator: on the stand, j.j. hall said he had been offered $12,000 to murder collins, and he chose karl holley and smitty to carry out the hit.
narrator: the force of the explosion ripped apart the truck and robert collins. both legs were blown off essentially. most of his left hand, and then on the right hand two or three fingers. he lived for six hours or so but essentially died of the blunt force trauma and bleeding to death. holley and smith learned on the news that the explosion had happened and so they drove back immediately to florida, got paid and went their way. narrator: prosecutors decided not to charge smitty with the federal crime of killing a witness. instead, he was tried in louisiana state court for capital murder. the state of louisiana had capital punishment as a potential sentence. the federal government did not have that at the time. there was ever a case for the death penalty, it was certainly this particular case.
to corroborate what j.j. hall and karl holley said, but even that wasn t going to get smitty acquitted. narrator: once again, smitty demanded to testify on his own behalf. over the years i ve tried quite a lot of capital cases, and very rarely do i call my client. it is just considered to be suicide. i didn t testify in my first trial, and i ve been holding my breath, waiting to get up here in this courtroom so i could express myself. i told them i wasn t guilty of nothing. it came down to the jury believing either me or them. narrator: after a week-long trial, the jury returned with a verdict. not guilty. after eight years on death row, smitty was a free man. my knees got weak. clive even reached out and i said i was okay, but i was reborn again.