The Fence - Dick Lehr [156]
Smut should have heeded Mike’s advice, but for reasons that did not involve Boston police. He and eight others in the KOZ gang were indicted in late 1999 on federal drug and conspiracy charges. Smut had been caught twice selling crack cocaine to an undercover agent.
Smut was off the street—for good now, caught up in the nation’s draconian mandatory drug sentencing laws. His attorney, Bob Sheketoff, sought out Ted Merritt, hoping to get some leniency for Smut’s cooperation, but none was forthcoming. Smut eventually pleaded guilty to one drug sale, and he was in Portland, Maine, in 2003 finishing a seventy-month sentence when he foolishly got caught up in a $300 coke deal. Smut was living at a halfway house and working at a Portland hotel. Instead of heading home to Indira and a third child, a daughter named Destiny, conceived during a conjugal visit and born on May 7, 2004, Smut was sentenced to do another twenty-one years in prison based on sentencing formulas that factored in his multiple prior convictions.
Smut did his best to adjust to prison life. He participated in a Bible study program, took classes in computers and writing, worked out regularly, and became known on the basketball court for his three-point shot. “It’s Smiggity for three!” he’d yell after releasing the ball on a long arc to the hoop. In the Portland County jail he became an inmate “trustee” and was known among the guards for his calming presence. A number of the corrections officers wrote on his behalf prior to his final sentencing, including one who credited Smut with saving him from a beating by another inmate. “Mr. Brown saw what was taking place and placed himself in harm’s way by assisting me in dealing with the aggressive inmate until my backup arrive,” the guard wrote. “I have repeatedly thanked Mr. Brown for his help that day only for him to humbly say, ‘I just did what was right.’”
In quiet moments, Smut took to composing dozens and dozens of rap songs, which he’d send home to his mother, Mattie, or to Indira for safekeeping. He dreamed of someday becoming a songwriter. One song he wrote included a verse about his misbegotten role as a witness for Ted Merritt in the conviction of Kenny Conley.
Ted Merritt hope you hear it, here’s the lyrics:
I can’t bear it, tell the public I never lied
And told you that Ken Conley was the white guy.
I’m the star witness Feds want a fast conviction
Exploited my words had an innocent cop sentenced.
So now I’m finished, every cop hatin’ my guts
Now my days are dim, I’m condemned for being Smut.
The year after the trial, Willie Davis told Kenny Conley just before Labor Day to get ready to report to prison. So Kenny and Jen got married that weekend. “It was a forty-eight-hour wedding,” Jen said. They rounded up about fifty of their friends and family. Jen’s brother flew in on short notice from Chicago. Her aunt drove up from Connecticut. Friends chipped in to put the newlyweds up at a new hotel along the South Boston waterfront, where they spent what Jen later called a “Boston long weekend honeymoon.”
The next week, Willie Davis managed to win a stay of Kenny’s sentence in order to continue Kenny’s legal appeals—a pursuit that turned Herculean. Kenny’s circle of supporters expanded to include Boston city councilors and Massachusetts congressmen Joe Moakley and Bill Delahunt. Delahunt called on Bob Bennett, the powerful Washington, D.C., attorney, who represented President Bill Clinton during his sex scandals, for help. Bennett agreed to take over Kenny’s appeal on a pro bono basis.
Kenny’s case worked its way back and forth between federal court in Boston and the First Circuit Court of Appeals. Ted Merritt and U.S. attorney Donald Stern fought him at every turn. But then in the fall of 2001, Bob Bennett thought he’d achieved a breakthrough. Negotiating with the