– The man convicted of raping and murdering 8-year-old Cherish Perrywinkle in 2013 will be back in court Tuesday as he seeks a new trial.Investigators found that Smith abducted Perrywinkle by luring her into his van at a Northside Walmart in 2013. Smith was later arrested on Interstate 95 shortly before her body was found in a creek.
A status conference hearing is scheduled for 10 a.m. Tuesday for the 78-page appeal filed by his lawyers in April.that many errors were made in his trial that led to the penalty phase where he was sentenced to death.that even if those errors were made, the evidence was overwhelming that Smith murdered Perrywinkle, and it would not have impacted the outcome of his getting the death penalty.
Back in May, the State Attorney’s Office filed a response to the motion for a new trial, arguing it should be “summarily denied.”Belkis Plata, a Jacksonville attorney not associated with the case, said Tuesday’s hearing is procedural, but explained Smith’s strategy. “The job of the new defense attorneys is to poke holes in the work that the former defense attorneys did and try to show that it was so poorly done, that it negatively affected Mr. Smith, and he deserves to have another day in court,” Plata said.Ariel Schiller joined the News4Jax team as an evening reporter in September of 2023. She comes to Jacksonville from Tallahassee where she worked at ABC27 as a Weekend Anchor/Reporter for 10 months.
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