Roy Smith was executed by the State of Virginia for the murder of Officer John Conner
According to court documents police officers were called to the home of Roy Smith and during the standoff Smith would open fire killing Manassas City Police Sgt. John Conner
Roy Smith would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Roy Smith would be executed by lethal injection on July 17 1997
Roy Smith Photos
Roy Smith Case
Roy Bruce Smith, convicted of killing a Manassas police officer in 1988, was executed by injection tonight at the Greensville Correctional Center here after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a final appeal.
Smith, 50, was convicted of slaying Sgt. John Conner — the only police officer in the Manassas department’s 124-year history to die in the line of duty. Conner was shot five times, in the head, legs, arm and back.
According to his attorney, Smith had concentrated in recent months on researching dietary and other theories that he believed would benefit mankind. His last words, after he was strapped to a cot in preparation for the fatal injection, concerned his last meal, which consisted of grape juice and unleavened bread.
“There was some concern that I may not receive my last meal request, but I did, and I appreciate it very much. It was very helpful to me. I appreciate the extra effort that was gone to,” he said, then added: “One man may die so the rest may live.”
Smith had requested a level one-eighth teaspoon of Epsom salts in addition to the juice and bread, but the prison had none. He also was given fried chicken, green beans, mashed potatoes and gravy, but Corrections Department officials did not know if he ate the extra food, the Associated Press reported.
Witnesses to the execution said Smith displayed no emotion. He was pronounced dead at 9:12 p.m.
He became the 40th person executed by Virginia since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Virginia has now surpassed Florida, with 39 executions, and is second nationally to Texas, with 131, officials said. Paul B. Ebert, the Prince William County prosecutor, said Smith’s death would “bring closure” to the residents and police department in Manassas, the county seat.
“A lot of people knew Sergeant Conner,” Ebert said. “His death affected the community. I’m sure the execution will do likewise.”
Smith killed Conner, 38, in a drunken rage during an exchange of gunfire July 24, 1988. Smith, complaining about his failing marriage, had downed 14 beers. Armed with a loaded assault rifle and two pistols, he sat on his porch, fired the rifle several times into the air and said, according to neighbors, “I hope somebody calls the police, because I will shoot the first one that arrives.”
Convicted of capital murder, Smith spent eight years on death row.
This morning, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Smith’s last appeal on a 7 to 2 vote, with Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissenting. Smith’s lawyers argued that a federal court failed in 1995 to properly weigh evidence that he was inadequately represented in his state trial.
They said his original defense team failed to conduct ballistics tests that, conducted after the trial, backed Smith’s testimony that he was 20 to 30 feet away from Conner during the gunfire. Prosecutors charged that Conner was killed by a point-blank shot to the head from Smith’s handgun
To get the death penalty, prosecutors had to prove that Smith knowingly killed a police officer. The defense claimed that no witnesses saw who opened fire and that Smith did not know in the darkness that Conner was an officer.
Speaking before her son’s execution, Irene Smith of Harpers Ferry, W.Va., said she believed that police officers accidentally shot Conner and lied afterward. “They’re killing somebody who didn’t do what they said, but that will be a sin on those people,” she said. “My son’s gun never shot the fatal shot. He is not a cop killer.”
Roy Smith did not petition Gov. George Allen for clemency, Irene Smith said, because he thought “it would be a waste of taxpayer money.”
Roy Smith concentrated in recent months on a campaign against foodstuffs containing soybeans or soy derivatives, claiming that the “whole nation is being poisoned” by the substances
His attorney, Michele J. Brace, said Roy Smith believed that many of the world’s health problems — from diabetes to cancer — are caused by soy and that to counter any ill effects, people should eat more foods containing magnesium — including Epsom salts and Rolaids antacids.
Brace said that Roy Smith, who spent the last months of his life bargaining with his cell mates for Rolaids and reading articles on soy taken from the Internet, had but one regret about his execution: “He would like to get this information about soy out to more people. I think he’d also like to disseminate his ideas on cold fusion” to produce nuclear energy. “He thinks he has found a way to make it possible.”
In another Virginia death row case, U.S. District Judge James R. Spencer rejected a stay of execution today requested by attorneys for Joseph Roger O’Dell III, 54, in Richmond. Spencer refused to overrule the governor’s decision denying new DNA tests for O’Dell, convicted of raping and strangling a Virginia Beach woman in 1985. O’Dell’s attorneys appealed Spencer’s decision to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals