Judge dismisses charges in Columbus ‘Cold Justice’ murder case of Kirby Smith
Columbus’ Kirby Smith cold murder case has been dismissed, freeing suspects Rebecca Haynie and Donald Keith Phillips from any future prosecution.
Muscogee Superior Court Judge Gil McBride issued a ruling this week dismissing the murder charges “with prejudice,” meaning they cannot be revived.
The judge’s decision was not unexpected, as prosecutors already moved to drop the charges. They said they didn’t have the evidence to take the case to trial, but they left open the option of re-indicting it.
McBride, who had set a Dec. 6 trial date, said the prosecution cannot have an indefinite span to decide in a case already 17 years old.
“The state has had available vast public resources and ample opportunity to bring this case to trial during the approximately 17 years that have elapsed since the murder giving rise to these charges and seven years since defendants were first arrested for this crime,” he wrote.
He already held prosecutors in contempt for failing to share evidence with the defense, despite multiple court orders, and had warned them he was inclined toward dismissing the case.
Because prosecutors failed to supply any evidence from the TV crime show “Cold Justice,” which featured the suspects’ arrests, he ruled they couldn’t use anything from that episode in the murder trial.
The judge mentioned the television show toward the conclusion of his ruling.
“It is doubtful Defendants would have ever been charged based on the record of this case in the absence of interest from a California entertainment studio 10 years after the crime was committed. This entertainment studio, which profits from scandalous allegations and has no burden of proof in a court of law, has since refused to cooperate with the court in this case. This order is the outcome that results naturally when forensic inquiry and the pursuit of truth are confused with entertainment.”
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The homicide
The case has taken many turns since Smith, 50, was found shot once in the torso and again in the head the morning of Monday, March 8, 2004, in Kirby’s Speed Shop at 1438 Jacqueline Drive.
A coworker found Smith dead around 8 a.m., but investigators suspect he was shot around 9 o’clock the night before, when his office computer data showed Smith had been online.
Detectives said they didn’t find evidence of forced entry and determined that only a gold necklace Smith wore was missing. He still had cash in his pocket, and guns and more money were still in a safe in the shop.
At the time, Smith and Haynie, then Rebecca Smith, were in the midst of a contentious divorce, said police, who alleged Phillips was Haynie’s lover at the time, and shot Smith at her behest.
The widow later remarried.
‘Cold Justice’ show gets involved
During a preliminary hearing in 2014, investigators said they immediately considered the estranged wife a suspect, as Smith had evidence of her alleged infidelity.
Despite detectives’ suspicions, police did not arrest the pair until June 15, 2014, when producers of the “Cold Justice” show got involved. The arrests were featured in an episode that aired a month later.
Defense attorneys long claimed authorities had no direct evidence either Haynie or Phillips killed Smith, and neither would have been charged if not for the TV show.
The defense attorneys’ demands for evidence and judge’s orders to provide it have spanned three administrations in the DA’s office, starting with former District Attorney Julia Slater, who lost election in 2020; then former District Attorney Mark Jones, who pleaded guilty to felonies and resigned Nov. 15; and now acting District Attorney Sheneka Terry, who took over Oct. 6, after Jones was suspended.
Haynie and Phillips were indicted Aug. 30, 2016. The defense in July 2018 asked McBride to dismiss the case for lack of a speedy trial.
In McBride’s order this week dismissing the charges, he wrote of those early delays:
“It is noteworthy, finally, that the state failed to indict this case for over 26 months after defendants were arrested. Viewed from hindsight, this delay suggests equivocation, uncertainty, and a lack of confidence by the state that this case should have ever been pursued.... The state has delayed the case at every turn under an apparent strategy of ‘ready, fire, aim.’”
This can’t be allowed to continue, he said in his order filed Wednesday:
“The state is not entitled to an infinite number of delays for endless reassessment of evidence that should have been brought before a jury long ago. All concerned in this case are entitled to finality, which the court ... will now bring about with this order.”
This story was originally published December 23, 2021 at 6:56 PM.