Former Oakland Raiders defensive end Anthony Wayne Smith, whose murder trial
stemming from a 2008 shooting death ended in a hung jury, was charged this week
with three more Los Angeles County slayings from several years
earlier.
The new criminal complaint, filed on Monday, charges Smith, 43,
with a total of four counts of first-degree murder, incorporating the original
case against him and the kidnap-killings of three other men - one in 1999 and
two in 2001.
Special allegations listed in the complaint say the three
earlier victims were tortured before being killed.
An arraignment has
been set for July 17 on the new charges, and Smith remains held without bond, a
spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office, Sandi
Gibbons, said on Thursday.
Smith's lawyer, Michael Evans, said his client
would plead not guilty to all the charges and that the new criminal complaint
came as a "surprise to all of us."
Smith, a first-round 1990 draft pick
of the Raiders, then based in Los Angeles, and an 11th pick overall for the
National Football League that year, played all seven seasons of his NFL career
for the Raiders, first in Los Angeles and then in Oakland.
Evans said he
was informed of the new charges just 45 minutes before jury selection was set to
begin on Monday in the retrial of the original case charging Smith with murder
in the October 2008 slaying of an associate named Maurilio Ponce.
The
first jury deadlocked 8-to-4 in favor of a guilty verdict, leading to a
mistrial.
The latest felony complaint charges Smith with three additional
counts of first-degree murder in connection with the November 1999 slayings of
brothers Kevin and Ricky Nettles, and the June 2001 killing of Dennis
Henderson.
According to Gibbons, the Nettles brothers were abducted from
a car wash in Los Angeles by two individuals posing as police officers and were
found shot to death the next day.
About 19 months later, Henderson and
another man, Terry Ware, were kidnapped in Los Angeles by several armed
suspects, placed in separate cars and driven away. Ware was freed but
Henderson's body was found in the back of a rental car the next day. He had been
beaten and stabbed to death, Gibbons said.
Gibbons said she had no
further information about a possible motive or circumstances behind the
killings. She said prosecutors would decide later whether to seek the death
penalty against Smith. Homicide detectives assigned to the case were not
immediately available for comment.
Smith was charged in February 2011
along with two other men in connection with the slaying of Ponce, who was found
shot to death on a remote roadside in Lancaster, California, north of Los
Angeles, on Oct. 7, 2008.
The defense has acknowledged that Smith and
Ponce were once involved together in a cargo theft, and that Smith was seen
driving Ponce's car a month after he was slain.
But Evans has insisted
that his client had nothing to do with Ponce's murder and argued during the
trial that police lacked any physical evidence, such as DNA, fingerprints or
gunpowder residue, linking him to the crime.
He said Ponce had given
Smith his car when Ponce stopped being able to make payments on it.
Evans
said he could not comment in detail about the three additional slayings because
he had not yet seen evidence that prosecutors will be required to share with
him. (Editing by Peter Cooney)
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