Jury finds Smith guilty on all counts in Five Points shooting; Judge sentences gang member to 40 years in prison + VIDEO

State Judge Robert Hood gave Michael Juan “Flame” Smith 40 years in prison Monday night after a Richland County jury found him guilty of attempted murder and four firearms violations in a 2013 shooting that paralyzed a University of South Carolina student in Five Points.

The jury of 11 women and one man deliberated slightly more than an hour after getting the case at 5:44 p.m.

Last year, Smith, 22, was sentenced to 10 years on a federal firearms violation in the case. Hood said that it was likely the federal sentence won’t begin until Smith had served the full 40 years of his state sentences. That means Smith will be around 70 years old when he finally leaves prison.

Smith’s longest sentence on state charges was for attempted murder. Hood gave Smith 30 years on that charge. Last week, Smith rejected a plea bargain offer of 25 years for all charges.

Over the six days of trial, the jury had heard from more than two dozen witnesses, including Smith, who took the stand Monday, and Martha Childress, who was shot in the spine in Five Points in the early morning hours of Sept. 13, 2013.

Confined to a wheelchair, Childress, 20, is now paralyzed from the waist down for life, and her injuries may yet be life-threatening, a doctor testified.

The trial also featured rare evidence that Smith, 22, had been a full-fledged member of the violent Bloods gang since he was 15. Normally, judges and defense attorneys try to keep gang membership evidence out of a criminal trial, since the very mention of such an afiliation in a gang like the Bloods, whose members must commit a crime to join, is considered so inflammatory as to incite jury passions,

Before passing sentence, Judge Hood heard opposing emotional statements from the mothers of Childress and Smith., both of whom choked back tears as they spoke. One asked mercy, the other demanded no mercy.

“First and foremost, I would like everybody to know my child is not a poor little girl to be pitied,” said Pam Childress Johnson, her daughter sitting in her wheel chair beside her. “She is one of the strongest persons in this room today.”

After she was shot and undergoing a long depressing rehabilitation, “It was like pressing a light switch, and she looked at me, and said, ‘I’m not going to let him win. I’m not going to be his victim.’ From that point forward, Martha came back,” Johnson told the judge.

Johnson continued, “The maximum amount of time that he can be sentenced to, I beg of you, to give to him...There has been no remorse.”

Then Smith’s mother, Juanita Smith, stood and wept for almost a minute before she began.

“I didn’t even know he had a gun,” she told the judge. “I never seen him with a gun, no, never ever. I was always told by his friends when I asked, ‘Why do you-all call him Flame?’ And they would say, he fights with his hands, he fights with his fists.”

Juanita Smith said she always prays for her son and “I always pray for the victim. I always pray for her. I’m so proud of her. She didn’t let this stop her. She kept going to school. I wish my son could have did what she’s doing, what she’s doing with her (wheel) chair. He’s able to walk.”

Smith has left a four-year-old son that she and her husband are now raising, Juanita Smith said. “We refuse to let our grandson out of our sight one time. We don’t let him have no play guns, no games, no nothing that consists of a gun. Just blocks!”

She continued, “Please allow our son to go home, to be with his son, to help raise his son...I wish it was me paralyzed. That should have been me.”

Asked by Hood if he had anything to say before sentencing, Smith declined.

But earlier Monday, Smith had taken the stand, told the jury he fired that night in Five Points because he was being fired upon by others and then underwent a grueling cross-examination by prosecutor Luck Campbell, who accused him of laughing when he was told the student, Martha Childress, had been paralyzed for life by the gunshot he fired in the entertainment district.

Campbell reading from transcripts of tape-recorded statements Smith had made in telephone calls from the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center.

Smith didn’t deny any of his recorded statements Campbell read to him, including statements Campbell characterized as asking others to provide alibis for him and asking friends to intimidate Childress’ family.

“I said a lot of things; I didn’t mean them,” Smith told the jury.

Childress is now back at the University and has been in trial each day, sitting in a wheelchair at the front of the courtroom near the prosecutors’ table.

Campbell also asked Smith about tattoos, including one that Campbell said was a signature Bloods tattoo.

“I’m not a Bloods gang member,” Smith said. However, during the trial, Richland County gang expert Capt. Vince Goggins testified that law officers had known Smith was a Bloods gang member since he was 15.

Campbell also asked Smith about statements he made about beguiling the jurors in his case, including remarks that he would use his “gift of gab” and “hit them with that innocent look.”

Campbell quoted Smith as saying, “The things I’m going to say, I’m going to have them confused.”

Asked by his lawyer, Aimee Zmroczek, about his telephone statements, Smith stressed to the jury that he was frustrated being in jail and said things he didn’t mean.

The Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center routinely records all inmate telephone calls. Inmates know the calls are recorded and warned that prosecutors might listen to them and use them as evidence at trial.

Under questioning by Zmroczek, Smith also explained why he was carrying a gun in Five Points that night, saying he had been badly beaten by a group of men a month or so before the October 2013 shooting and it was “just for protection.”

Earlier Monday morning, Smith had told the jury he only shot his pistol after seeing people shooting at him, and he fired back.

Campbell, in her questions, told Smith that the Glock he fired that night had been stolen. She asked him where he got it.

“On the street,” Smith said.

Campbell also asked Smith why, if he was in Five Points where there are numerous police officers at night, didn’t he ask police for help if he felt threatened.

Smith replied that he didn’t ask police because, “I take full responsibility for my own actions.”

Smith also said he had written a letter to Childress saying how sorry he was and that he had prayed for her.

“I kept her in my prayers,” he testified.

After the jury verdict, Judge Hood denied a defense motion that he set aside the verdict on the grounds that the jury’s passions had been inflamed by various prosecution statements, including that Smioth was a gang member.

But Hood said that it was the defense that made the moves that allowed Bloods gang membership evidence before the jury.

“I wasn’t going to allow anything about gangs in the trial,” Hood said.

Prosecutors Campbell, Meghan Walker and Dolly Garfield also repsented that police had arrested Smith immediately after the shooting and he had a Glock pistol on him. Smith first told officers that he had picked the gun up, but later switched his story when scientific tests proved his hands were covered with chemicals called “gun shot residue,” chemical deposited on a gun shooter’s hand after a firing.

Although Smith and Childress had never met, and he didn’t intend to shoot her, Smith still could be found guilty of attempted murder because he acted with malice – a state of mind characterized by “showing a total disregard for human life,” Campbell told the jury.

“It doesn’t absolve him from liability just because he’s a bad shot,” Campbell told the jury, acknowledging that Smith probably hadn’t intended to hit Childress.

In any case, she said, “He went (to Five Points) with a gun, he was spoiling for a fight.”

Smith’s conviction in an earlier violent crime, a burglar, meant that he was eligible for addition firearms charges that carried extra years in prison.

This story was originally published August 17, 2015 at 1:35 PM with the headline "Jury finds Smith guilty on all counts in Five Points shooting; Judge sentences gang member to 40 years in prison + VIDEO."