Florida Supreme Court upholds death penalty in 2013 Polk murder

BARTOW – The Florida Supreme Court has upheld the murder conviction and death penalty against Benjamin D. Smiley Jr., who was found guilty in October 2016 of gunning down a 58-year-old Lakeland man during a home-invasion robbery.
The state's high court rejected arguments, in part, that there wasn't sufficient evidence to convict Smiley, of Tampa, and that some photographic evidence should not have been admitted.
At 27, Smiley remains the youngest inmate on Florida's death row.
Clifford Drake was awakened in the bedroom of his Lakeland home that April night in 2013 to Smiley tapping him on the forehead with a chrome revolver, according to court testimony. Smiley ordered Drake to tell him where the safe was hidden, and when Drake said he didn't have one, Smiley fired a single shot into his leg, hoping to force him to reveal the safe's whereabouts. When Drake continued denying any knowledge of a safe, Smiley shot him in the chest.
During Smiley's trial, Mark Wilkerson identified Smiley as the man he had seen in the back yard of his stepfather's home the night of the shooting, and who had ordered him inside at gunpoint.
During the investigation, Lakeland police detectives discovered a backpack that had been left behind in Drake's bedroom, but it would take two years to make an arrest. Their break came when Hillsborough County deputies arrested Smiley for armed robbery, and his DNA in that case was linked with DNA found at the Drake murder scene.
In testimony during the trial, Smiley told jurors he wasn't at Drake's home that night and had no involvement in the crime.
Jurors deliberated about six hours in 2016 before convicting Smiley of first-degree murder, armed robbery, aggravated assault with a firearm and armed burglary. Sentencing was delayed while the state Legislature revised Florida's death-penalty process in response to a U.S. Supreme Court mandate.
In April 2017, a new jury recommended unanimously that Smiley should be executed for Drake's murder, and Circuit Judge Jalal Harb followed that recommendation when sentencing him to death in February 2018.
In an unrelated case, Smiley was sentenced to mandatory life imprisonment in February 2018 for gunning down Carmen Riley, 46, during an attempted robbery in her Lakeland home a month before Drake's killing. Prosecutors initially had been seeking the death penalty in that case, as well, but later withdrew it.
Suzie Schottelkotte can be reached at suzie.schottelkotte@theledger.com or 863-533-9070. Follow her on Twitter @southpolkscene.