By Zachary Frey, Greenwich
Francis Clifford Smith was convicted of murdering Grover Hart in the dining room of the Indian Harbor Yacht Club, near the bottom of Greenwich Avenue. Smith was imprisoned almost continuously from his arrest 74 years ago on July 28th, 1949 until his release in September, 2020, making him the longest-serving prisoner in American history.
The Boston Globe recently published an interview with Smith, who is still alive and turns 99 this year.
Smith claims that there’s no evidence of his guilt and the government has no case against him.
These statements might sound cliché to many, but they are factually accurate and Smith has a point. The details of his case are very troubling, and this should be considered a serious local concern.
The three most obvious problems with Smith’s case are as follows: (1) all the key witnesses admitted they lied, (2) another man confessed to the murder, and (3) the lead investigator announced he was wrong about Smith and testified that, “I’m positive he didn’t kill Grover Hart.”
When all of that all came out by 1954, it meant that virtually every piece of evidence against Smith had evaporated and there was considerable new evidence indicating that he didn’t do it. After these revelations, Smith’s death sentence was commuted to life in prison because he was, in effect, deemed too innocent to execute.
Smith should have been outright exonerated at this point, but he instead spent an additional 66 years in prison thanks to legal technicalities that had nothing to do with his factual innocence.
For example, his final appeal was denied after the judge ruled that just because the star witness admitted she lied, that wasn’t grounds for a new trial because Smith couldn’t prove the prosecutors knew the witness was lying at the time. Needless to say, there is some indication that overzealous prosecutors played dirty to keep Smith in prison. It is ridiculous and morally wrong to imprison a man without evidence for 70 years, let alone do it when there’s evidence saying he’s outright innocent. The fact that something like this happened in Greenwich should outrage every single one of us.
At this point, many of you will be thinking the same verbatim question. When someone first hears about Smith’s case, it’s remarkable how often they will quietly lean in and ask: “Is Smith black?” The answer happens to be no, but it should be very telling that this case is so transparently abhorrent that the knee-jerk reaction of the average person is to assume it had to have happened to a black man who lived in the 1940s.
Now, while it can never be said with absolute certainty that Smith didn’t do it because only a DNA test can disprove a negative, and that isn’t available here, our legal system does have standards. This case does not even come close to meeting those standards. Since it was clearly wrong to imprison Smith then, logically, is it entirely accurate to say that Smith was wrongfully imprisoned. In fact, this is the worst individual case of wrongful imprisonment in human history. Yes, that happened right here in Greenwich.
All of this raises two distinct issues that need to be addressed. The first issue is that Smith should be given the opportunity to have his name cleared while he is still alive. This is simply the right thing to do and, given his very advanced age, this should happen as soon as possible.
The second issue is that no local or state official has ever given the public an answer to the following question: “How and why did a man spend 70 years in prison for a crime in Greenwich when there was virtually no evidence against him?” This is important because if a case with so many serious mistakes could escape detection for so long, then it would beg the question if there are other cases that are similarly flawed. If those cases happened recently enough, then innocent people might still be in prison. We simply don’t know whether or not this has occurred, but it is a distinct possibility that needs to be investigated.
The roadblock here is that it isn’t really anyone’s job to make sure obviously innocent people are not rotting in prison for things they clearly did not do.
However, the Board of Selectmen and members of the State Legislature do have the power and influence to ensure that extraordinarily flawed cases that should be reviewed, do in fact get reviewed.
Our local politicians have not done this yet because we have not given them a reason to care. It is important to understand that writing to a local politician is not like writing to your congressman. Local elections in Greenwich are regularly decided by less than 100 votes. If one person writes in about one issue, a local politician will generally at least notice. If 5 or 10 people write in, that issue will probably be addressed. If dozens of people write in, that issue will be addressed.
To be clear, I am asking my fellow residents of Greenwich to write a letter to our Board of Selectmen and our state legislators requesting that (1) Smith’s case be properly reviewed and he be offered a fair opportunity to clear his name while he is still alive and (2) an investigation takes place that can determine why a case this flawed was allowed to happen in Greenwich to begin with, why it went undetected for so long, and if there are any other cases out there like this one. These extremely reasonable requests boil down to: “people accused of crimes deserve due process” and “innocent people shouldn’t be jailed.” These are principles we all agree on, and this should already be happening without us needing to ask for it.
Here is a link to where you can contact the Board of Selectmen.
Here is a link to where you can contact the state legislators for Greenwich. The state senator for all of Greenwich is Ryan Fazio, but we have three different state representatives. If you aren’t sure which specific representative is yours, you can plug in your address here to find out.