Jailed for life as teen, Chesco man gets new sentencing hearing

Twenty years later, Chester County Detective Matt Gordon still remembers how a 16-year-old "scared the hell out of him."

In 1996, Samuel Edward Smith confessed to Gordon that he had repeatedly hit a 64-year-old man with a pipe wrench and cut his throat with a butcher knife. That man, David Kenny, died two weeks later after being on life support.

"He was calm; he was casual. It was like an everyday conversation you would have, except this had to do with murder," Gordon said Tuesday morning, testifying in the first day of Smith's new sentencing hearing at the Chester County Justice Center.

Smith, now 37, was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole, but he was back in court as a result of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in January. The justices found that their 2012 decision banning mandatory sentences of life without parole for juveniles must be applied retroactively. Smith is one of about 500 Pennsylvania inmates convicted of murder as adolescents who are entitled to rehearings.

Prosecutors argued that Smith deserves the same sentence he originally received. District Attorney Thomas P. Hogan cited incidents of misconduct in prison, including an escape plan, and Smith's involvement with a neo-Nazi white-supremacist gang.

The defense countered that Smith's misconduct was confined to the early years of his imprisonment. Smith has not had any write-ups in the last eight years, and only one in the last 10 years, assistant public defender Kristine Mehok said.

Prosecutors called two detectives from Smith's original case; two of Kenny's daughters, for a victim-impact statement; new testimony from Michael Torres, an expert in prison gangs from the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections; and FBI Special Agent James Fitzgerald, who works on white-supremacist organizations.

Torres called Smith's prison-conduct record "uncommon" compared with the 2,000 inmates he has interviewed.

"From what I know about skinheads and white supremacists, . . . I would say he's likely a danger to society," Fitzgerald said. He cited the violent murder, Smith's expressed desire for a gun if freed, and his leadership role in the neo-Nazi prison gang. "I'd be greatly concerned if he lived by me."

Prosecutors also called a psychiatrist who said he would diagnose Smith with antisocial personality disorder, commonly called psychopathy.

Public defenders called Smith's mother and sister to the stand, as well as his longtime pen pal. Both family members described an extremely violent and tumultuous childhood, with parents who heavily abused drugs and alcohol and physically abused Smith.

"We got whooped pretty good. . . . Sammy got it much worse than all of us," said Sherry Hulme, Smith's older sister. She also said their father and stepfather were racists. That affected Smith, but he has changed in the last few years, she said.

"My brother's matured a lot; I don't see any of the bitterness, anger, that I used to see," Hulme said. Hulme also served jail time for her involvement in the crime; she helped clean Smith of the blood and joined Smith in Kenny's stolen car with the plan of escaping to Florida.

Sherry Flick, who has exchanged letters with Smith for 14 years, said that one time she had helped him distribute neo-Nazi papers he published called the Supreme Word. They included graphic images of killing for the cause, and the description of African Americans as "subhuman."

But she said that in the last three years, Smith has become a born-again Christian.

Hulme said she didn't know her brother to be in any white supremacist group, but that he used to believe that races should "stay with your kind."

The hearing will resume Sept. 7 with the defense planning psychiatric testimony, other adolescent and prison experts, and possibly more family members.

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