Kermit Smith was executed by the State of North Carolina for the murder of Whelette Collins
According to court documents Kermit Smith would abduct Whelette Collins and two other women at gunpoint. He would force two of the women into the trunk of the car and Whelette Collins was sitting up front. Kermit would sexually assault and murder Whelette Collins. The two other women were able to get away and notified police who arrested Smith at the scene
Kermit Smith would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Kermit Smith would be executed by lethal injection on January 24 1995
Kermit Smith Photos
Kermit Smith Case
A man was put to death yesterday for raping and killing a cheerleader, becoming the second white person executed for killing a black person since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.
Kermit Smith Jr., 37, was convicted in the 1980 rape and murder of Whelette Collins, who was kidnapped from North Carolina Wesleyan College along with two other cheerleaders. Authorities say Smith smashed her head between two cinder blocks while the other cheerleaders were locked in a car trunk. The women in the trunk escaped and Smith was arrested within hours.
Corrections officials rejected Smith’s request to let Collins’s mother and the two survivors press the plungers to send the lethal injection into his bloodstream.
Smith was the 260th person to be executed since the 1976 Supreme Court decision allowing states to resume using the death penalty
The only other white person executed for killing a black person since 1976 was Donald Gaskins, who was put to death in 1991 in South Carolina for killing a fellow prisoner.
Several civil rights organizations say the death penalty is disproportionately applied to black people.
Smith said in his last statement that the execution was unlawful, adding, “The only thing that I’m going to say is what the judge imposed on me: Lord have mercy on your souls