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Loading ...Life sentence for gay man in intern murder
11.25.2008 3:00pm EST
(Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) A 43-year-old suburban Philadelphia man will spend the rest of his life behind bars for the murder of a 23-year-old intern he had attempted to rape.
William Smithson could have been sentenced to death by lethal injection for the murder of Jason Kyle Shephard two years ago.In addition to finding Smithson guilty of murder, the jury also convicted him of attempted rape, kidnapping and drug charges.
Shephard’s body was found Smithson’s home in September 2006. The 23-year-old from Cavalier, North Dakota was studying sports marketing at Northern State University in Aberdeen, South Dakota and had taken a semester off to intern at Daktronics, a scoreboard manufacturer.
Smithson was a supervisor for a Daktronics office in Pennsylvania when Shephard visited the office in the summer of 2006.
During Smithson’s trial, the jury was told that on the night of his murder, Shephard had called several friends from his hotel room before Smithson picked him up and brought him to his house.
Prosecutor Thomas Lawrie said Smithson slipped the date-rape drug GHB into a drink and gave it to Shephard. He then began undressing the young man.
Lawrie said that Shephard was partially conscious and put up a fight. Smithson then punched Shephard in the face and strangled him. Smithson then hid the body in the basement and attempted to conceal the murder.
Smithson, testifying in his own defense, said that he had trouble coming to terms with his sexuality and as a result had developed a drug habit. He also admitted that he had hosted drug-induced sex parties that involved Washington lobbyists and New York doctors.
He told the jury that during the parties he frequently injected and snorted crystal meth.
In his closing arguments, Lawrie called Smithson’s home a “domicile of degradation.”
During the penalty phase of trial, Shephard’s father said the young man had been studying to be a teacher and was an avid runner.
“He was the core of our family,” said Kyle Shephard.
Smithson’s attorney pleaded for the jury not to impose the death penalty. “Let him live,” urged Mary Beth Welch.
In returning with a life sentence the jury, indicated that despite the severity of the crime, Smithson was emotional instable because of his drug addiction and did not have a criminal record prior to the murder.
Smithson will be formally sentenced in January.
Not that I oppose his sentence, acutally I do as he should have gotten the death penalty, but one has to wonder had the situation been reverse and it was a straight man that killed a gay boy, would he have only gotten 10 months in prison like the guy in SC did.
Hiding the body in the basement? Didn’t he think that it would start to decompose? That would put a damper on his crystal-sex parities wouldn’t it?
Well, yeah. Obviously, tiger…it’s a broken system that is just as irrationally bigoted as the people of this country. But we don’t know the sexual orientation of the victim here. And no death penalty? This is america, damnit! If I wanted killers to not get the death penalty, I’d move someplace else.
Sad, the life of a trusting young man cut short. He likely was full of promise on the way to doing great things with his life. His parents’ pride and joy.
The lives of two men lost, One dead and the other in jail for life. What a senseless tragedy. Especially for the young man’s family. No way ever to make that right for anyone. Even if there were an execution for the killer. The young man can never be brought back to life. That’s it. Very Sad.
I could never see myself going to this extreme just for some hot sex.I see gorgeous men everyday,that I would even pay for,but the fantasy ends there.
This is a horrible crime and very sad for the family. The article said that Smithson was emotionally unstable because of his drug use. Did it even dawn on the writer of this article that Smithson became unstable not necessarily of the drugs themselves; but because of his use to self-medicate to ease the battle of the internal and external homophobia that our ignorant society wages against us. This is never an excuse for murder but as a society we need to start looking at how homophobia impacts certain criminal behavior within our community and how we can work as a society to help avoid it.
Rape is rape regardless of your story or sexual preference. And this was premeditated on top of it. If he wanted willing sex we all know there are a zillion options. That is not what he wanted clearly.
It’s things like this that give our enemies ammunition to use against us. Come on homos – get with it!
Lots of sick strait people out there too.
Someone who is gay and good with websites should do a website called “a man and a woman” and have a list of all the really f-uped things that married strait people do. Especailly the ones that have kids. Or statistics that show we are no more or less messed up than the rest of the population…
But I do know that shame can have a very bad effect on people.
Tom in Long Beach
Why do some members of the gay community insist on blaming everything on homophobia? This appears to be a selfish act committed by a self-centered, hedonistic individual who lacks a conscience, and there are too many individuals like Smithson in the gay scene. I worked as a reporter and editor for a gay newspaper for six and a half years, and I observed and reported on countless incidents of financial scams, violence, and other anti-social behavior that mostly involved gays victimizing other gay people. It seems that some gay people believe that since they don’t follow mainstream society’s rules regarding sexuality, they don’t have to follow any of society’s rules.
I became increasingly disillusioned with the selfish, rude behavior that seems to pervade the gay scene. So stop using homophobia as a convenient excuse for everything.
This is a tragic thing that should never happen, you have to also consider a society that makes people turn to drugs as they can’t come to terms with their sexuality.