Samuel Lee Smithers

Trial On December 14, 1998, Smithers officially went to trial for the murders of Denise Roach and Christy Cowan.

During the trial, Smithers changed his statement and denied that he killed the two women. He claimed that someone else killed the women as part of an elaborate drug and blackmail scheme. Smithers testified that an unnamed man threatened to show his wife a photo of Smithers with another woman unless he agreed to use the property for illegal drug deals, and paid Smithers to help with the drug transactions. Smithers claimed he witnessed the same man fatally strike Roach with a hatchet, and he was forced to dispose of the body. Likewise, Smithers said that Cowan was killed by another person who ordered him to dispose of the body. However, Smithers's defense was not supported by objective evidence. The sentencing trial of Smithers was scheduled to begin in January 1999.

During the sentencing phase of Smithers's trial, the defense attempted to show that Smithers had a troubled childhood caused by alleged physical abuse inflicted by his parents, and that he was a victim of childhood abuse, religious repression, mental illness, and brain damage. Smithers's ex-wife, with whom he had a son, stated that throughout her 23-year marriage with Smithers, he was a good father and spouse and she could not believe that he would commit such brutal murders.

On January 25, 1999, the jury unanimously voted for Smithers to receive the death penalty for both killings. Before sentencing, Cowan's father stated that he did not wish to see Smithers get the death penalty and hoped that he would spend the rest of his life in prison, and used his imprisonment to repent and help other inmates reform.

On June 25, 1999, Smithers was sentenced to death by Circuit Judge William Fuente for the murders of Cowan and Roach, whose deaths were cited to be "extremely torturous" by the judge during sentencing.

As of May 2019, Smithers was one of Florida's 19 prisoners held on death row for murders that took place within Hillsborough County.

Death row and execution Link to 1989 unsolved murder In 2014, 18 years after Samuel Smithers killed Denise Roach and Christy Cowan, police investigators uncovered that Smithers was likely the culprit behind the 1989 unsolved murder of Marcelle Delano. Delano, who was also working as a prostitute, was found murdered on November 27, 1989, and her body was located not far from where Smithers disposed of the corpses of Cowan and Roach. Due to the case's similar characteristics as that of Cowan and Roach's murder, Smithers was ultimately named the prime suspect in the case, even though he denied any involvement in Delano's death.

Appeals Smithers appealed his death sentence to the Florida Supreme Court twice. His first attempt was on May 16, 2002 and was rejected. The second, on July 9, 2009, was dismissed. His appeal for post-conviction relief on March 29, 2018 was similarly denied.

Lethal injection execution On September 13, 2025, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a death warrant for Smithers, whose death sentence was scheduled to be carried out on October 14, 2025.

In a final bid to commute Smithers's death sentence, Smithers's lawyers filed an appeal to the courts of Florida, submitting that their client was too old to be executed at the age of 72, and this would amount to "cruel and unusual punishment". However, Hillsborough County Circuit Judge Michelle Sisco rejected the appeal on September 26, 2025. Subsequently, on October 8, 2025, the Florida Supreme Court rejected the appeal on the grounds that no precedent cases had specifically held that the elderly are categorically exempt from execution. A final appeal was later lodged to the U.S. Supreme Court and was denied hours before the execution was carried out.

Smithers was put to death by lethal injection at the Florida State Prison on October 14, 2025, at 6:15 pm. Prior to his execution, Smithers ate a last meal of fried chicken, fried fish, a baked potato, apple pie with vanilla ice cream and a sweet tea.

Smithers was one of seven inmates scheduled to be executed in October 2025 across the United States. Smithers was also one of four inmates slated to be executed within the same week; one of them, Missouri prisoner and convicted cop killer Lance Shockley, received the same execution date as Smithers. Both Smithers and Shockley were executed an hour apart from each other.

Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (FADP), an anti-death penalty group, condemned the execution, stating that Smithers was an elderly man with continued cognitive decline during his incarceration on death row and the death penalty would not provide closure to the victims' families; however, Governor Ron DeSantis supported the execution, emphasising that Smithers was an "axe murderer" who murdered two innocent women in cold blood and his conduct deserved the death penalty.

Smithers was also the first white person to be executed for killing a black person in the United States since the 2019 execution of John William King, and only the second in the state of Florida, after Mark Asay, since capital punishment first began in the state in 1769. One of Smithers's victims (Roach) was black, while the other (Cowan) was white.

At the time of his execution, Smithers became one of the two oldest prisoners to be executed in the history of Florida since 1924, at the age of 72; the other was R. Charlie Gifford, who was found guilty of the 1950 assassination of state lawmaker Charles Schuh Jr. and executed at age 72 on February 21, 1951. This record was surpassed when 74-year-old Dusty Ray Spencer was executed on June 25, 2026, for the 1992 murder of his wife Karen Spencer.

Aftermath In 2016, true crime writer Fred Rosen penned a book titled Deacon of Death: Sam Smithers, the Serial Killer Next Door, which was based on the life and crimes of Smithers.