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16 Facts About Lemuel Smith

1.

Lemuel Warren Smith was born on July 23,1941 and is an American convicted serial killer who was the first convict to kill an on-duty female corrections officer.

2.

Lemuel Smith is considered one of the most dangerous living inmates in the New York prison system and is housed in 23-hour-a-day isolation from other people.

3.

Lemuel Smith was born in Amsterdam, New York, in a very religious household.

4.

Lemuel Smith was quickly arrested, and on April 12,1959, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for assault.

5.

Lemuel Smith was free and employed nearby and hair and blood evidence made him a main suspect.

6.

Lemuel Smith was known to frequent the area and witnesses recalled Wilson being accosted by a large man.

7.

Around the same time, in late October 1977, Lemuel Smith was transported by police to Bleecker Stadium in Albany.

8.

On March 5,1978, with the bite mark match, Lemuel Smith confessed to five murders in an attempt to convince prosecutors of his insanity, including the murder of Dorothy Waterstreet nearly twenty years earlier.

9.

Lemuel Smith attested to being controlled by the spirit of his deceased brother, John Jr.

10.

On July 21,1978, a four-day bench trial in Schenectady ended with Lemuel Smith being found guilty of kidnapping, and he was sentenced to another twenty-five years to life.

11.

Lemuel Smith was found guilty on February 2,1979, and sentenced to another fifty years to life.

12.

Lemuel Smith was indicted for the murder of Joan Richburg after confessing.

13.

In 1981, Lemuel Smith was in the maximum-security Green Haven Correctional Facility.

14.

Lemuel Smith quickly recognized the bite marks and Smith was charged with Payant's murder on June 6,1981.

15.

The defense impugned testimony of inmates and other corrections officers and proposed conspiracy theories but, with no answer to the bite mark evidence, Lemuel Smith was found guilty on April 21,1983.

16.

On July 2,1984 an appeal by Lemuel Smith called that law's constitutionality into question and was successful in commuting his death sentence to another term of life.