Michael Dewayne Smith
Michael Smith speaking at his clemency hearing
Facts of the Crime:
Michael DeWayne Smith, was a member of the Oak Grove Posse, a subset of the Crips gang in Oklahoma City. On November 8, 2000, three members of the Oak Grove Posse attempted to rob Tran’s Food Mart in south Oklahoma City. The three robbers were Teron “T-Nok” Armstrong, Kenneth “Peanut” Kinchion, and Dewayne “Pudgy-O” Shirley. During the course of the robbery attempt, the owner of the store shot and killed Armstrong. Kinchion and Shirley were eventually arrested. Smith was not involved in the attempted robbery but had close personal ties to Armstrong.
On Friday, February 22, 2002, two days before the trial of Kinchion and Shirley was scheduled to start, Smith left his apartment in the Del Mar Apartments in Oklahoma City early in the morning. His roommate, Marcus Berry (also known as Marcus Compton), saw Smith take a .357 caliber revolver with him. Smith went first to Janet Moore’s apartment looking for her son Phillip Zachary who he believed was a police informant. Smith had earlier told Berry that “snitches need to be dead.”
The evidence supports the conclusion that Smith arrived at Moore’s apartment sometime before 6:30 a.m. Shoe prints indicated that Smith kicked in her front door and then her bedroom door. Moore began screaming, and, at approximately 6:30 a.m., a downstairs neighbor heard arguing between a man and a woman and then a single “pop” followed by footsteps.
Later that morning around 7:30 a.m. Smith arrived at A-Z Mart, a convenience store approximately fifteen miles from the Del Mar Apartments. A-Z Mart was immediately next door to Tran’s Food Mart, the site of the earlier robbery attempt where Armstrong had been killed. The clerk on duty that morning at A-Z Mart was Sarath “Babu” Pulluru. Pulluru was filling in for the store owner who was taking the day off. Smith told detectives that he emptied two pistols into Pulluru, took some money, and used bottles of Ronsonol lighter fluid to start fires in the store. Smith said he set fire to the cash register, Pulluru’s body, and a back room in order to destroy evidence. Shoeprints at the scene tracked Pulluru’s blood from the cash register area, where his body was found, down the aisle to where the Ronsonol lighter fluid was displayed for sale. The bloody shoe prints at the A-Z Mart were similar to the shoe prints found at Moore’s apartment.
Smith has been on death row since October 21, 2003.
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