Steven Smith was feeling a bit frisky one night so he went into the bedroom of a six-month old baby and attacked her so violently that she died from her injuries. Smith was sentenced to death but his lawyers tried to have the sentence reduced.
Smith acknowledges he intended to sexually assault his girlfriend's 6-month-old daughter but says he never intended to kill the baby.
The girl, Autumn Carter, of Mansfield, died because Smith was too drunk to realize his sexual assault was killing the child, Smith's attorneys were telling the Ohio Parole Board on Tuesday. And Ohio law is clear, they say: a death sentence requires an intent to kill the victim.
"The evidence suggests that Autumn's death was a horrible accident," his attorneys, Joseph Wilhelm and Tyson Fleming, said in a written argument prepared for the board.
I could easily argue against the death penalty but there is no way I could trivialize the crime by referring to it as nothing more than an "accident". There is no way I could ask for leniency because Smith "never intended to kill the baby." He killed the baby! End of story.
[Apparently Smith started snivelling at his execution. Tough guy when he's killing infants. Not so tough when attention is focused on him.]
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