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| Steve Smith |
An Ohio man who admitted raping a 6-month-old baby but claimed he never meant to kill her was executed Wednesday after his last pleas for mercy failed.
Steve Smith, 46, was executed by lethal injection at the state prison in southern Ohio for the September 1998 killing of his live-in girlfriend's infant daughter, Autumn Carter. Smith was pronounced dead at 10:29 a.m.
Smith, 46, denied killing Autumn for more than a decade but recently tried to get his sentence reduced to life in prison, arguing that he was too drunk to realize that his assault was killing the baby.
The Ohio Parole Board and Gov. John Kasich unanimously turned him down, with the board finding that Smith is among "the worst of the worst."
"Smith took the life of an innocent 6-month-old infant while using the baby to sexually gratify himself," the board said in its decision. "It is hard to fathom a crime more repulsive or reprehensible in character."
Smith spent his last hours in emotional visits with his family and eating his last meal while listening to a Cincinnati Reds game, prison officials said.
Smith visited with his only child, a 21-year-old daughter named Brittney, and his niece on Wednesday morning, prison spokeswoman JoEllen Smith said.
She said the group also laughed during the hour-long visit, when they said their final goodbyes.
Smith ate his last meal while listening to the Reds play the St. Louis Cardinals on Tuesday night. He also spent part of the evening writing letters, listening to music and having his veins tested for the execution.
Back on that night of September 29, 1998, Autumn's mother, Kesha Frye, was awakened by Smith, who she'd lived with for four months.
Smith, extremely drunk and naked, laid a naked and lifeless Autumn on Frye's bed, according to court records.
Frye rushed the baby and her other 2-year-old daughter to a neighbor's house and called 911. Doctors spent more than an hour trying to revive her before she was pronounced dead.
The baby was covered in bruises and welts, had cuts on her forehead, and had severe injuries showing she had been brutally raped, although there was no semen.
At the home, there was no sign of forced entry, and police found a large amount of white cloth that came from Autumn's diaper strewn about; police found the rest of the diaper in a garbage bin outside, along with 10 empty beer cans and a T-shirt.
At the time, Smith told police that he "didn't do anything."
"I'm not sick like that," he said.
At trial, Smith didn't testify in his own defense on the advice of his attorneys, even as prosecutors repeatedly referred to him as a "baby raper," showed pictures of Autumn's battered body and told jurors that her assault lasted up to a half-hour.
Expert witnesses for Smith said he may have accidentally suffocated the girl within 3 to 5 minutes of the assault.
The jury found Smith guilty of aggravated murder and sentenced him to die.
At an April 2 hearing in which Smith sought to have his death sentence reduced to life in prison, he admitted to the crime and said he didn't mean to kill Autumn.
He told Ohio Parole Board that he was not in his right mind the night of the crime and has to live every day with what he did. He said he was sorry and wished he could ask Autumn for forgiveness.
Smith becomes the 51st inmate put to death in Ohio since it resumed executions in 1999.
Source: ABC News, May 1, 2013
