The 51-year-old frequented a Fells Point homeless shelter, struggled with hepatitis C and diabetes, and repeatedly vowed to his family that he would shake his demon, drugs.
Family members say they wanted to help, and that’s why they didn’t immediately bail him out of jail after his most recent arrest. They wanted to teach him a lesson.
With his death last weekend, Smoot has become the human face of the problems at Baltimore’s Central Booking and Intake Center, the overcrowded facility where he died after a fight with correctional officers. Hospital pictures show his swollen, purple head.
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“I hadn’t seen my father since I was 5, and the very next time I saw him was when I saw the picture on TV and saw his face,” said Sharrell Jackson, Smoot’s 25-year-old daughter.
Smoot’s life was a cycle of drug addiction, crime, imprisonment and illness, according to records and interviews with friends and relatives. He was never married but had four children with three women. He spent a combined 480 days in city jails, as well as stints in state prisons and under supervised probation, records show.
He became a familiar face at many correctional facilities, known to officers for being disruptive.
Smoot was last arrested about 5 a.m. May 3 in the 300 block of St. Paul St., near Mercy Hospital, records show. He was charged with failing to appear in court last fall on a summons issued after he was accused of stealing a computer from Baltimore City Community College.
In the weeks before the arrest, Smoot had been living with a sister in Randallstown, relatives said. But friends said Smoot might have spent his last night of freedom in a park near the hospital – his property, confiscated by the jail, included a blue jacket, a black backpack, a green suitcase stuffed with clothing, and medication, records show.
The man who has given police such names as Reginald Keyes, Ronald Manning and Ronald Williams wasn’t carrying identification.
He was processed into Central Booking and ordered held on $1,500 bail – meaning that he needed $150 to walk free.
He didn’t have it, so he contacted his family in a search for the cash. James Smoot, his older brother, said he was going to wait until May 16 to post bail.
But the night of May 14, Smoot got into a melee with correctional officers after he refused to return to his cell.
Two correctional officers who witnessed the fatal beating told investigators that Smoot started the brawl by hitting an officer and was stomped, kicked and punched in retaliation, according to accounts received by The Sun. A lawyer for Smoot’s family said that other witnesses dispute whether Smoot struck an officer.
Incident’s impact
His death – ruled a homicide by Maryland’s medical examiner – prompted state and federal investigations that could lead to criminal charges against one or more officers. Six correctional officers have been placed on paid administrative leave during the investigation. The incident has increased public pressure on a state-run facility that has been besieged by criticism for its crowding, inefficiency and alleged inhumane conditions.
Smoot’s death should help bring about changes to improve conditions at Central Booking, said Tammy M. Brown, executive director of the city’s Criminal Justice Coordinating Council.
“I think [Smoot’s death] is even more reason to try to be diligent and have these changes made,” she said.
After a funeral for Smoot yesterday, the family lawyer, A. Dwight Pettit, said he had notified the state of the relatives’ intent to sue. “I think [Smoot] will have a legacy of having a major impact, of some kind of reformation of the system,” Pettit said.
Smoot was raised by a nurse and a truck driver in Edmondson Village in West Baltimore, family members said. The youngest of five siblings, he dropped out of school in sixth grade, about the same time he tried heroin, according to court records.
By the time he was 21, Smoot began compiling a criminal record that includes arrests for larceny, theft, burglary and drug possession.
A welder by trade, he also held jobs mowing lawns, working in restaurants and cleaning at Memorial Stadium and Oriole Park at Camden Yards, his family said.
Smoot had two grown daughters: Kenya Kelly, a 34-year-old who lives in Baltimore and works for an auditing firm, and Jackson, a nursing student in Howard County.
He had another son and daughter – Joshua, 10, and Ramona, 6 – with Michica Dashiell, 42, whom he met while cleaning at the stadiums.
Smoot liked to take the two young children to the mall, their mother said. Over the years, he stayed close with some relatives, while drifting away from others.
He achieved two of his greatest accomplishments while he was in prison – earning his high school equivalency diploma and his paralegal certification, his family said. He loved to write letters to his family and legal briefs.
Armed with his paralegal skills, he fancied himself a jailhouse lawyer, said his brother James Smoot. Three times in the 1990s, he sued for his release from Central Booking and the city detention center. In court filings written in pencil, he cited assorted Maryland case law, such as the 1972 case Bartholomey v. State.
After a 1998 burglary arrest, Smoot wrote, “The police officers exaggerated the whole incident and added erroneous information to the report that did not happen. The facts will show that no burglary was ever committed. The evidence is insufficient to prove anything ever happen[ed], which it didn’t.”
When he wasn’t in jail, Smoot lived with relatives or on the street. He frequented East Baltimore, including Beans & Bread, a Fells Point soup kitchen.
“When he was using heroin and cocaine, when he would really get down, his family would come down and grab him,” said Charles Harvin, 48, a shelter resident who met Smoot in jail more than 10 years ago. “But once he’d get better, he’d be back down here.”
Kelly called drugs her father’s “demon.” She last spoke to him in 2003 when he told her he was proud of her, she said.
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“I told him,” she said, “to try to please get himself together. ‘You’re a smart man. You’re a strong man. You’re a brave man. Get yourself together so we can have a relationship where we can see each other and talk every day.'”
Kelly said she sensed then that her father was tired, mostly worn out from his lifestyle. “I think it kind of bruised his soul,” she said.
‘In and out’ of jail
That year, court officials in Baltimore County ordered a competency evaluation of Smoot after he was arrested on charges of stealing a car. The report detailed his addiction problems, physical and mental health ailments, and frustrations with the criminal justice system.
Smoot claimed that he had been hospitalized in 1969 for psychiatric issues and endured “shock wave therapy.” He said he had been shot in the head in 1980. More recently, he suffered from high blood sugar, hypertension and hepatitis C, the February 2003 report said.
Tired of going “in and out” of jail for most his life, Smoot told his interviewer that he would “fight going back there.”
Harvin – who saw Smoot a few days before his last arrest – said the man had gotten smaller and thinner as age and drug addiction wore on him. Harvin remembers Smoot as someone who could “run his mouth” but not one who was physically violent and aggressive.
“He will not hit you,” Harvin said. “He may make you want to hit him.”
Sun staff writers Lisa Goldberg, Laura Loh and Frank D. Roylance contributed to this article.
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