I'm sending you this Bible in the hope that it will bring you peace and hope. May the Lord bless you and give you peace and the strength to know that Jesus loves you very much and is always there when you need Him. Even now, 29 years later, when Smithey describes receiving that letter, it's clear that it hit her like a thunderbolt.
I was shocked. She sent me a Bible; she even sent me a beautiful necklace, back when we could have things like that. But after Gerberick's letter, "that's when I started to forgive myself.
She has thought endlessly about the murder but can't explain why she did it because she doesn't really understand it herself. In their unanimous recommendation that her life sentence be commuted, the five members of the Arizona Board of Executive Clemency quoted from a psychiatric evaluation that attributes the murder to Smithey projecting her own childhood suffering onto Sandy Gerberick, so that, without being consciously aware of it, "she felt she was stopping the baby's pain by stopping it from crying.
It sounds so bland and flat -- everybody says they're sorry. I can't bring back the life that I took. Smithey stopped trying to escape from prison -- and from what she had done. Her disciplinary record began improving. She enrolled in self-improvement classes. She read the Bible. She earned her GED and went on to complete 52 hours of college credit before the Department of Corrections canceled the program. She published several poems as part of a prison-writing workshop, also now discontinued.
Smithey also gradually weaned herself from the anti-psychotic medications she had been taking since entering the prison system. By , she had shown such signs of progress that the clemency board recommended to Gov.
Fife Symington that he commute her sentence to make her eligible for parole. Symington denied her commutation without comment in early In , another clemency board unanimously recommended to Gov. Janet Napolitano that she commute Smithey's sentence to make her eligible for parole.
The commutation letter included an evaluation by Elizabeth Kohlhepp, a Phoenix psychiatrist, who concluded that Smithey "had no signs of psychosis," that her clinical profile was normal, and that in contrast to her mental state when she was incarcerated decades earlier, "she easily formed rapport, was warm, albeit modest Smithey does not presently pose a significant threat of violence to others should her sentence be commuted to parole-eligible, as long as she is provided with adequate supports," Kohlhepp added.
Smithey's older sister, DeAnna Lee Harris, wrote in a letter that she had been lucky as a child to have been adopted by a loving family and wondered how Smithey's life might have turned out if she'd had that same luck. The board also noted that a stepdaughter of Erma Gerberick, who passed away in , had responded for the family to a query about Betty by writing, "She has done enough time. Nine years later, Smithey tried again.
On April 10, the clemency board sent a letter to Brewer recommending that her sentence be commuted to 48 years, calling hers one of those "extraordinary cases where mercy is justified.
Her team of supporters includes a niece, Rebecca Henderson, who is offering Smithey her home should she receive parole; Andy Silverman, a University of Arizona law professor who has followed her case since ; and Donna Hamm, a prison-reform advocate and wife of James Hamm, a convicted murderer who was granted clemency by Gov.
Rose Mofford in Smithey is what is known as an "old-code lifer," one of those sentenced between and August under laws that state they can only become eligible for parole if the governor commutes their sentence. Between and , governors commuted the sentences of lifers to make them parole-eligible after they'd served, on average, 11 years.
In , legislators changed the laws to require that anyone sentenced to life serve at least 25 years before becoming eligible for parole. Unlike commutations, which only the governor can grant, paroles can be approved directly by the clemency board. Since , governors have steadily granted fewer and fewer commutations. Since , Smithey is only the third "old-code lifer" to become eligible for parole.
The political nature of clemency decisions and a growing reluctance by governors in Arizona and nationally to grant clemency made Smithey's supporters skittish. Henderson, her niece, declined an interview. Donna Hamm and Silverman expressed fears that any publicity could hurt Smithey's chances. Complicating matters: The Legislature changed the law on life sentences for murder again, scrapping parole eligibility after 25 years.
Ruckman Jr. People often have the misconception that granting clemency means letting a violent criminal out onto the street, he said, whereas almost all clemency grants are for non-violent crimes or, as in Smithey's case, when there is strong evidence that, in the decades since the crime, the person has taken significant steps to rehabilitate him or herself and merits being granted what amounts to an act of grace.
But, Ruckman said, because those misconceptions make many in the public indifferent or hostile to the idea, nowadays granting clemency amounts to an act of courage for a governor. But while Arizona is seen as a comparatively punitive state, "the public is often more reasonable than the politicians who claim to represent them," said Mona Lynch, a professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California-Irvine. People showed me they cared.
I've got my education. I never, ever let myself become institutionalized. I've reconnected with my family, my nieces and nephews. All I ask is a chance to prove myself. Murderpedia Juan Ignacio Blanco. Smithey will live with her niece in Mesa. America's longest-serving female inmate, 69, walks free 49 years after strangling month-old baby to death DailyMail. Jan Brewer and members of Arizona's parole board agreed she was no longer the same woman who murdered baby Sandy Gerberick in On Monday, the board members voted to free her from prison and any community supervision.
Her conviction She found work, answering an ad from a single mother in northwest Phoenix looking to hire a live-in baby-sitter. Getting forgiveness Nearly five decades later, Smithey remains imprisoned at Perryville. Betty Smithey certainly didn't start out as a model prisoner. Before Ward, she said: "The emphasis was on punishment. Napolitano denied the clemency request without comment in Improving herself Nine years later, Smithey tried again. Juan Ignacio Blanco.
MALE murderers. Classification: Murderer. Characteristics: L ive-in babysitter - America's longest-serving female inmate.
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