Five Points trial offered rare glimpse into Bloods gang

Testimony like that from a Richland County Sheriff’s Department gang expert at the just-finished trial involving a Bloods gang member who shot a University of South Carolina student at Five Points is not often aired in state criminal trials.

But in the trial that resulted in Michael Juan “Flame” Smith’s being sentenced to 40 years in prison for attempted murder and gun violations, gang expert Capt. Vince Goggins spent about 20 minutes on the witness stand. He identified Smith as a gang member and explained to the jury how police identify and track members of local gangs, who are believed to number about 800.

“Smith has been documented as a gang member for quite some time,” Goggins told The State newspaper in an interview Wednesday in which he elaborated on his jury testimony.

Martha Childress, the student Smith shot in a few seconds of what prosecutors characterized as reckless gunplay, was left paralyzed for life. Now 20 and confined to a wheelchair, Childress testified at the trial and is continuing her studies at USC.

When Smith was 15, Goggins said, he met Smith along with some other Bloods members at an apartment complex. At the time, Smith was wearing a red bandana, the Bloods color, and freely told him he was a Blood and was with other Bloods members, Goggins said.

Bloods gang members have a national reputation for violence and criminal acts, and state judges and defense attorneys normally succeed in keeping information about gang membership from being heard by a jury in criminal cases because it is considered inflammatory and often prejudicial by association.

However, at the trial’s opening, Smith’s attorney, Aimee Zmroczek, told the jury that Smith wasn’t a gang member but others who would be named in the trial were gang members.

That allowed prosecutors to call Goggins as a witness to rebut Zmroczek’s assertion, according to Judge Robert Hood.

“I wasn’t going to let anything about gangs into the trial,” Hood said in court after the jury verdict. “But the defense is the one that brought it up.”

Reached Wednesday, Zmroczek declined comment except to say that she would be appealing.

In his interview Wednesday, Goggins said that in addition to admitting gang membership and hanging around with Bloods members, Smith met other federally established criteria that allowed law enforcement to say he was a gang member.

Smith’s other hallmarks of gang membership included a gang tattoo and the use of gang signs. His gang tattoo was a five-pointed crown on his right arm. Five is a special number to Bloods, since the word “Blood” contains five letters, Goggins said.

On Smith’s Facebook page, which has since been taken down, photos once showed an angry-looking Smith making the letters G.K.B. with his fingers – sign language for Gangsta Killa Bloods, Goggins told The State. Those photos were introduced to the jury hearing Smith’s case.

Goggins told The State that police gather information about gangs such as the Bloods through self-admissions such as the one Smith made as well as by more sophisticated methods.

“It’s difficult to go after gang members through normal investigative techniques,” he said. “You have to use things like wiretaps and confidential informants.”

In that past 10 years in the Columbia area, there have been two major round-ups of Bloods gang members – one in 2006-07 and one in 2012. Both were coordinated by the FBI and took place only after months of covert wiretaps of Bloods’ phones and use of hidden cameras by law officers.

Although state law, like federal law, authorizes the use of wiretaps, the FBI has more wiretapping equipment and is far better financed than state and local law agencies, Goggins said. Placing wiretaps and hidden cameras involves vast expenditures of time and money – authorized personnel have to listen to hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of phone conversations and transcribe them in addition to usual investigative techniques.

The fact that the federal government can better handle the added expenses is another reason why the public is less likely to hear gang testimony in state courts, particularly when it comes to more complicated gang-related cases.

Goggins predicted there will be more sweeping round-ups in the future of local gang members. He declined to elaborate.

Evidence at trial indicated Bloods such as Smith can act heedless of consequences.

Over and over again on Monday, in a closing argument to the jury, prosecutor Luck Campbell mentioned an action by Smith, followed by “Does that even make sense?” or “It doesn’t even make sense.”

Undisputed evidence at trial showed Smith, drunk and high on marijuana, went on Oct. 13, 2013, to Five Points, a popular nightspot area saturated with police and surveillance video cameras. He was a carrying a loaded pistol, even though as a convicted felon – he had been convicted of burglary and was on probation – it was against the law for him to carry a firearm.

Then he perceived a threat from someone, he told jurors when he testified. Smith then fired wildly into a crowd of young people and was arrested within seconds, with a gun, by an alert Columbia police officer. Childress, whom Smith had never met, was hit by a stray bullet.

Smith told the officer he had just found the gun on the ground and picked it up after someone else dropped it. But surveillance video showed Smith putting the gun in his jacket pocket just minutes before.

Smith was arrested and charged with attempted murder and firearms violations. After his arrest, Smith from jail plotted with a girlfriend to intimidate Childress and her family and laughed about her paralysis.

Those conversations were captured on the jail’s tape recording system – a system that all the inmates are told about. Excerpts were read to the jury at trial. Smith also was captured on tape bragging how he was going to charm the jury into letting him go.

Goggins said getting more testimony before juries to let them know how gangs operate is important. “It’s definitely something that needs to spread statewide,” he said.

Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott said Goggins’ unit, which gathers information on the area’s gang members, is a valuable tool in fighting crime and often assists in narrowing down suspects. Gang members, who aren’t supposed to snitch on fellow members, often will turn into informants when pressed by law officers, Lott said.

“You’re big and bad until you start thinking about that jail cell door swinging in on you,” Lott said.

Some gang members “can’t be helped and have to be put away for a long time to protect our citizens,” Lott said.

“Smith definitely falls in that category,” Lott said. “He chose the gang life. Even after he was arrested for shooting Martha Childress, he was trying to intimidate witnesses – thinking he could ‘gang’ his way out of that crime. He probably will always refuse to see the light.”

Many gang members delude themselves and think they are in a romantic life of crime, Lott said. “They are blind to the possibilities of being caught because they have bought into this gang life that’s in movies and music,” Lott said. “But they’re just being stupid – it helps us catch them.”

This story was originally published August 19, 2015 at 7:29 PM with the headline "Five Points trial offered rare glimpse into Bloods gang."