Will ‘Cold Justice’ TV show evidence be allowed in Columbus murder trial? Judge issues ruling
The continuing court saga of a Columbus cold-case homicide closely tied to a reality-TV show has taken another turn.
To punish prosecutors for disobeying court orders to produce evidence in the 2004 shooting of auto shop owner Kirby Smith, Judge Gil McBride has ruled no evidence from the show “Cold Justice” will be allowed in the suspects’ trial.
The suspects are Smith’s estranged wife Rebecca Smith Haynie, who later remarried, and her alleged lover at the time, Donald Keith Phillips.
Their attorneys have asked McBride to dismiss the case because prosecutors failed to share pretrial evidence with the defense, including footage from “Cold Justice,” which featured the cold-case investigation in a July 11, 2014 episode.
The defense long has claimed authorities have little evidence other than what was in the TV show. It also claims the prosecution has waited too long to bring the case to trial, violating the defendants’ constitutional rights.
Another issue now is District Attorney Mark Jones’ seeking the death penalty, a move he announced at an April 8 court hearing called to address defense motions to dismiss the case.
In follow-up rulings on the issues raised at that hearing, McBride has refused to drop the case, but decided prosecutors must pay some penalty for disobeying his orders.
Defense attorneys had asked the judge to dismiss the murder charges “with prejudice,” meaning they could never be revived.
“The court, at this time, declines to dismiss the indictment with prejudice and believes, for now, that the seriousness of the charges against these defendants must be weighed and passed upon by a jury of their peers,” McBride wrote.
Still he found the prosecution in “willful contempt” of his orders, saying he was forced to conclude its inaction resulted from “dereliction or indifference” or “a desire to work injury to these defendants.”
As a consequence, prosecutors at trial will use no material from the “Cold Justice” production, nor even mention it to jurors, the judge wrote, stating the prosecution is precluded from “ALL mention, direct or indirect, to the jury at trial or during jury selection of any all statements and video footage, raw or edited, compiled by Cold Justice.”
McBride acknowledged that Jones, who took office in January after winning election last year, is not to blame for earlier delays in sharing evidence with the defense:
“It would be unfair to lay at the current district attorney’s door responsibility for the missteps and omissions that occurred before he took office and over which he had no control,” the judge wrote.
Jones said Thursday that he doesn’t believe the “Cold Justice” evidence is crucial.
“I never planned on using it,” he said, adding he saw the show and did not think authorities here should have participated in it.
“I didn’t like it,” he said. “I wouldn’t have done it.”
Other evidence
Email exchanges in the court record indicate other evidence the defense sought is being turned over to the judge, who will review it to decide what the defense can see, because it involves other, ongoing homicide investigations with other suspects.
Jones told the judge in April that police would be reluctant to surrender files from an unsolved case, lest the disclosure damage the investigation. McBride said he found that argument “implausible” and ordered the evidence to be submitted. It includes:
The death penalty
In other court motions, defense attorneys argued Jones’ pressing death penalty charges against Haynie and Phillips is “vindictive,” as evidenced by Jones’ raising it at a hearing intended to address the defense complaints about sharing evidence.
Atlanta attorney Brandon Bullard wrote that Jones’ aim in serving notice he would seek capital punishment was to retaliate against defense attorneys by trying to get them disqualified from a death-penalty case:
“Here, what conclusion could a reasonable defendant draw other than that the motive for the death notices was retaliatory — particularly when the state’s first asserted consequence of that action was an attempt to remove counsel against whom it had been litigating?” Bullard wrote.
He asked McBride to bar a death-penalty prosecution by finding it violated the defendants’ rights to due process of law under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.
In a separate motion, Bullard asked McBride to find the defendants’ Sixth Amendment rights to a fair and speedy trial have been violated by repeated delays the prosecution caused.
Bullard noted that an alibi witness for the defense died in the spring of 2020. “To have a defense witness die while the state drags its feet is among the quintessential examples of prejudice that the Sixth Amendment is concerned with,” he wrote.
McBride has yet to rule on those motions. Another hearing in the case so far is set for 1:30 p.m. on Sept. 9, attorneys said.
Sixteen years
When 50-year-old Kirby Smith Jr. was found shot dead inside Kirby’s Speed Shop on March 7, 2004, he and Haynie were embroiled in a contentious divorce. The prosecution’s theory is that she engaged Phillips to kill Smith at the estranged husband’s 1438 Jacqueline Drive shop.
Police believe Smith was shot around 9 p.m. the night before a coworker found his body about 8 a.m.
Investigators found no evidence someone broke into the shop, and assumed the killer was someone Smith knew. They ruled out robbery as a motive because Smith had cash on him. The only thing missing was a gold necklace that Haynie prized, police said.
Haynie benefited from Smith’s life insurance after his death, investigators said. Jones has said her allegedly engaging another person to gain this financial benefit from a homicide justifies seeking the death penalty: “You can’t murder-for-hire someone,” he said Thursday.
The case turned cold for 10 years, until the “Cold Justice” producers, whom McBride identified as “Magical Elves Productions” and “Wolf Films,” got involved.
On March 15, 2014, they signed a contract with the Columbus Police Department allowing investigators access to production information “to assist in solving cold crimes in consideration of footage, materials, and advertisements in the edited broadcast program,” McBride wrote in a June 5 ruling.
While the show was in production, police arrested the suspects on June 5, 2014. The arrests were included in the episode that aired the following July.
Haynie and Phillips were indicted on Aug. 30, 2016. Their attorneys first filed speedy trial claims in 2018, alleging unconstitutional delays.
McBride ordered prosecutors to share “Cold Justice” evidence with the defense on Aug. 30, 2019. On Sept. 3, 2019, he ordered them to provide files from other Columbus homicide cases.
Additional orders were issued on Feb. 14 and March 5, 2020, before defense attorneys this year filed a March 25 motion asking McBride to compel the prosecution to surrender the evidence.