On Friday, September 12, Governor DeSantis signed a death warrant for Samuel Lee Smithers. The execution is scheduled for Tuesday, October 14 at 6 pm. If it proceeds, it will be the 14th execution to take place in Florida this year. FADP stands in opposition to all executions, which do nothing to make our communities safer and only compound cycles of violence.
Mr. Smithers is scheduled for execution in Florida on Octoer 14, 2025, for the 1996 murders of Christie Cowan and Denise Roach. He was sentenced to death in 1999.
At 72, Mr. Smithers is among the oldest people Florida has ever sought to execute. His lawyers argue that executing elderly persons serves no deterrent or retributive purpose, offends evolving standards of decency, and violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.
Medical evaluations, including recent neuropsychological testing, show measurable decline in Mr. Smithers’ functioning. He has a documented history of brain damage and psychotic disturbance dating back to his trial. Experts now warn that his decline is progressing toward dementia.
At Mr. Smithers’ sentencing in 1999, the father of victim Christie Cowan testified that his daughter would not have wanted an execution in her name. He pleaded with the court not to perpetuate violence, stating that Mr. Smithers “is also a child of God”:
“The last time I heard her voice was May 21, 1996, a week before she was murdered. She was in and out of prison a lot, both in Connecticut and later in Florida. She used to tell me about other women with her, what they had done and what they were like. She saw them as troubled souls, not as worthless people. Of course, she didn’t see herself in the same way.
Your Honor, I know my daughter and in her natural state without the influence of crack she would not want Mr. Smithers to be executed. My opposition to Mr. Smithers’ execution comes partly from a need to honor the memory of my beloved daughter, Christie, and not to subject her with more violence done in her name. Like it or not, Mr. Smithers is one of us, and like us he is also a child of God. I know it is not my place to decide when any person should die, and I don’t believe it’s the State’s place to do that either. That kind of judgment is something that only God is qualified to make.
I was here during the punishment phase of the trial. I saw Mr. Schmoll graphically describe my daughter’s murder. I saw from a distance the pictures of Christie that Mr. Schmoll held up to the jury. I realize that after Mr. Smithers left her for dead she was probably still alive, and that after being brutalized with an ax she probably still had to suffer through a death of drowning. It was almost like being murdered twice.
Your Honor, I have not had an uninterrupted night of sleep in almost three years. Her memory, the knowledge that Mr. Smithers did this to her, is also with me. If Mr. Smithers is sentenced to death, I will spend many more years without any resolution to this tragedy. And if he is actually executed after all the appeals are over, it will be for me the worse and most brutal possible kind of closure — something that will make me sick and ashamed for the rest of my life whenever I think of my beloved daughter, Christie.
Your Honor, I have to see this through to the end for Christie’s memory’s sake. If Mr. Smithers is executed I will have to be there, and I will have to watch, and then I’ll have to live with the memory of what I saw. And I will also have to live with the knowledge that great harm has been done to Jonathan Smithers and Jonathan’s mother in my daughter’s memory — in my daughter Christie’s name.
Your Honor, I hope that Mr. Smithers will spend the rest of his life in prison.”
Additionally, Mr. Cowan wrote in a letter to the judge, dated January 27, 1999: “We are all victims in this case, and I don’t see what possible good purpose can be served by inflicting additional pain on all of us.”