A status conference will be held Monday at 10 a.m. on Donald Smith’s appeal of his conviction and death sentence in the 2013 murder of 8-year-old Cherish Perrywinkle.
Smith will not be there in person, just his lawyers.
Back in May, the State Attorney’s Office filed a response to the motion for a new trial for the man convicted of killing 8-year-old Cherish Perrywinkle, arguing it should be “summarily denied.”
Investigators found that Donald Smith abducted Perrywinkle by luring her into his van at a Northside Walmart in 2013. Smith was later arrested on Interstate 95 shortly before her body was found in a creek.
A 78-page appeal was filed in April by lawyers for Smith, who was sentenced to death after the case took five years to go to trial. The appeal cited multiple things in his trial that he argues invalidate his original conviction, including:
Claims his lawyer “was ineffective for failing to identify, interrogate and strike a biased juror.”Also claims that his lawyer didn’t do a good enough job over things like “failure to object to the 911 call” and “failure to object to digitally altered photographs”Critical of mental health expert who testified that Smith was “the most dangerous pedophile she had ever met”
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