Miami mobster’s life could be spared after prosecutor’s misconduct undermines murder case

Florida inmate Corey Smith, a notorious Liberty City mobster, may be on the verge of death after prosecutorial misconduct undermined the state’s case against him.

Prosecutors with the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office announced in court Tuesday morning that their office is formally considering waiving the death penalty in Smith’s case — the first public acknowledgement that they may abandon their efforts to see the gang leader executed for murder.

“At this point, we are submitting materials to our death penalty committee,” prosecutor Rebecca DiMeglio told the judge Tuesday morning, referring to the office’s formal process for making death penalty decisions.

A court hearing has been set for November 13 to review the case.

“We have sent a request asking the state to waive the death penalty,” defense attorney Allison Miller told Judge Andrea Ricker Wolfson, “and we hope they will do so.”

At one time, Smith appeared destined for execution, having been sentenced to death in 2005 in a drug and murder case as the alleged leader of the ruthless John Doe gang in the 1990s. Smith was convicted of the murders of Leon Hadley, Jackie Pope, Cynthia Brown and Angel Wilson, as well as the manslaughter of Melvin Lipscomb and Marlon Beneby.

He was accused of ordering most of the killings and personally participating in the Hadley shooting, according to court documents. He received multiple sentences, including the death penalty, for the Brown and Wilson killings.

Changes in Florida’s death penalty in recent years, however, have necessitated a new trial.

Smith was still facing the death penalty when Judge Wolfson withdrew his case from prosecutors in March, a rare move given the overwhelming evidence of witness tampering and improprieties. Prosecutor Michael Von Zamft, a senior official in Attorney General Katherine Fernandez Rundle’s office, retired that day. His co-prosecutor, Stephen Mitchell, who has been accused of defending Von Zamft too vigorously given the charges, still works for the office.

In court Tuesday, a phalanx of top officials from the Miami Dade State Attorney’s Office showed up, along with the new prosecutors in the case, DiMeglio and Justin Funck.

If they were to retry Smith to reinstate the death penalty, they would be starting from scratch with a complex and lengthy case that fills some 161 boxes of documents. To complicate matters further, Smith’s new prosecutors are not allowed to communicate with the prosecutors who were dismissed.

They would also face relatively recent accusations that, 20 years ago, prosecution witnesses met almost daily to coordinate their testimony against Smith, and were provided with food and cigars. One of the witnesses was allegedly allowed to have sexual contact. At the time, the case was being led by then-prosecutor Bronwyn Miller, now an appellate judge. Miller appeared as a witness in the case, answering “no” when asked if she saw anyone drinking alcohol or having sex.

The recorded jailhouse calls also allowed prosecutor Von Zamft, who was handling the re-sentencing case, to admit that he had tried to round up witnesses in the jail yard with a longtime informant. The informant, William “Little Bill” Brown, had a relationship with Von Zamft and had been feeding him information from inside the jail, the Miami Herald previously reported.

Von Zamft was also filmed discussing the possibility of making a recalcitrant witness “unavailable.” While that term is a legal term that could mean the witness had a permissible excuse not to testify, Judge Wolfson said it could also be seen as a veiled threat on the witness’s life.

If the death penalty is abolished, Smith could still spend the rest of his life in prison.

But that’s not what her attorneys want. They have filed motions to vacate her conviction and sentence. Miller said she hopes for a negotiated settlement with a reduced sentence, similar to the recent case of Taji Pearson, whose life sentence was reduced in July to 15 years.

Pearson, the driver involved in a gang shootout that left a teenage girl dead, was not involved with Smith’s gang, but he was accused of misconduct by the same two prosecutors in the Smith case: Von Zamft and Mitchell. As with Smith, Pearson’s case was also taken over by DiMeglio and Funck.

Smith also faces federal drug and gun charges that would keep him in prison until 2051, a spokesman for the state attorney’s office said. He would be nearly 80 years old by then.