Clyde Smith Jr.

Clyde Smith Jr., a 32-year-old black male, was executed by lethal injection at the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas on February 15, 2006. Smith was found guilty of the 1992 murder of David E. Jacobs, a 45-year-old white male. Smith, who was 18-years old when he committed the capital crime, was sentenced to death on December 6, 1993.

On February 7, 1992, David Jacobs's body was found in his cab in the parking lot of a Houston, Texas apartment complex. An autopsy revealed Jacobs died after being shot three times in the back of his neck with a .38-caliber pistol. Jacobs’s wallet and $110 was missing.Smith was charged in Jacobs’s death after an April 5 incident in which Smith shot himself in the leg at another apartment complex in Houston. While police were investigating they found a .38-caliber pistol, which ballistic tests linked to the fatal shootings of Jacobs and another cab driver, 51-year-old Victor Bilton, who was shot three times during a March 22 robbery.

In 1993 a Harris County jury convicted Smith of capital murder. Smith confessed to shooting Jacobs and gave a tape-recorded statement introduced into evidence at the punishment phase wherein he also confessed to shooting Bilton and taking $120 and a watch from the cabbie. In April 1996 the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed Smith’s conviction and sentence. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles later denied clemency, and on the day of execution the Supreme Court of the United States denied a stay.

References

* Michelangelo Delfino and Mary E. Day, "Death Penalty USA 2005 -2006", (2008), 233-234.
* "Smith v. Dretke" (2005) 134 Fed.Appx. 674.
* "Smith v. Livingston" (2006) 546 U.S. 1162.

See also

* Capital punishment in Texas
* Capital punishment in the United States