THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, December 21, 1995 TAG: 9512210348
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LAURA LAFAY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: OCALA, FLA. LENGTH: Long : 144 lines
Thomas E. Smolka was freed Wednesday from the same courtroom where, 33 months ago, he was tried, convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the murder of his wife, Betty Anne.
Pale, thin and smiling, Smolka entered the courtroom with his arm around David Tucker, one of the three Miami-based lawyers who represented him at trial. His sister, Elaine Anisko, clapped when she saw him. He reached out and grasped her hands.
Fifth Circuit Judge Jack Singbush ``vacated, annulled, and set aside'' Smolka's conviction and ``withdrew, rescinded and vacated'' his sentence. Singbush also rescinded an order requiring Smolka to pay for his wife's funeral. Minutes later, Smolka left with his lawyers.
Smolka, a former Virginia Beach lawyer and real estate developer, was immediately engulfed by television cameras and reporters who followed him to the elevator and ran behind him into the parking lot. Smolka looked straight ahead and did not respond to their shouted questions of ``Aren't you happy?'' and ``How do you feel?''
``You've just been released from jail and you don't have any emotions at all?'' screamed one exasperated television reporter in a bright yellow coat.
``Of course he has emotions,'' said Tucker. ``He's very happy.''
Florida's Fifth District Court of Appeal overturned Smolka's conviction in August, ruling that the jury did not have sufficient evidence to convict him.
On Dec. 13, the court issued a mandate for Smolka's release. The state attorney general's office asked the Florida Supreme Court for an emergency order preventing the release but was turned down Tuesday.
``This is a tremendous vindication, '' said Smolka's lead attorney, Neal Sonnett, standing by the elevator after Wednesday's hearing. ``Tom Smolka is an innocent man. In this case, Tom Smolka didn't beat the system. The system worked. . . . I truly believe he is innocent.''
The ``real killer,'' said Sonnett, is ``still out there.''
Chief Assistant State Attorney Richard D. Ridgway, who prosecuted Smolka in 1993, scoffed at Sonnett's assertion.
``We found Betty Anne Smolka's murderer,'' he said. ``We don't need to look any further.''
Smolka's acquittal ``shows that we have a legal system, but we don't necessarily have a justice system,'' said Ridgway. ``What's legal and what's just are often two different things.''
Betty Anne Smolka disappeared on July 10, 1991, after her husband - then part-owner of the Ocala Radisson Hotel - sent her to the local Phar-Mor to buy lightbulbs and grease pencils for the hotel. Her bloodied rental van was found across the street the next day, and her body was discovered three days after that. She'd been shot twice in the chest.
Ridgway used a chain of circumstantial evidence - Smolka's refusal to cooperate in the police investigation, his bizarre behavior following Betty Anne's disappearance, comments he made about blood in the van's interior, and evidence about his dire financial straits - to convince the jury that Smolka killed his wife for $500,000 in insurance money. There was no direct physical evidence linking Smolka to the crime.
Smolka was convicted of first-degree murder on March 19, 1993. Since June 25, 1993, he has been held at the Union Correctional Institution in Starke. His stay there, according to records department head Harold Skeen, was largely uneventful.
In July 1994, Skeen said, Smolka filed a grievance complaining that prison authorities would not let him have the New Balance shoes someone had sent him. In September, he failed a randomly administered urine test for the detection of drugs and alcohol.
Smolka protested the resulting disciplinary report in another grievance, Skeen said, arguing that the drug test was unreliable and that authorities had not had probable cause for a warrant to test him.
For most of his prison stay, Skeen said, Smolka worked as a law clerk in the prison law library.
``To be honest with you, he has a very thin file. And to tell you the truth, I don't see anything very interesting. He was just an inmate,'' Skeen said.
The state attorney general's office has appealed Smolka's reversal to the Florida Supreme Court, but the court has not yet decided if it will review the case. Assistant Attorney General Rebecca Roark Wall, who is handling the matter, said she hopes the high court will review it because Florida case law about circumstantial evidence is vague and contradictory.
``The Supreme Court needs to clarify these issues so that this kind of thing won't happen again,'' she said.
If the Florida Supreme Court does decide to review the case, it could do so any time ``within the next week or within the next year,'' Ridgway said.
If the justices overturn the appeal court's decision, Ridgway said, Smolka will be rearrested and sent back to prison.
In Ocala, the Raddison is now a Days Inn, and the Phar-Mor where Betty Anne Smolka last shopped has been converted into a T.J. Maxx. Smolka, who is originally from Delaware, had already left town Wednesday night. He was going home to Delaware for Christmas, according to his brother-in-law, William Whipple.
``We're delighted,'' said Whipple, a retired lawyer who helped with the case and who was in court Wednesday. ``We're thrilled that he's coming home.''
Willis W. Stephenson, Betty Anne Smolka's father, has filed a wrongful death suit against Smolka. The case is pending in federal court in Norfolk. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
ALAN YOUNGBLOOD/Ocala Star-Banner
Thomas E. Smolka, right, and one of his lawyers, David Tucker,
listen as a Florida judge, Jack Singbush, vacates Smolka's
conviction and his sentence Wednesday in the slaying of Smolka's
wife, Betty Anne, in July 1991.
Graphic
THE SMOLKA CASE
July 10, 1991: Betty Anne Smolka leaves the Ocala, Fla., hotel
that her husband, Thomas E. Smolka, co-owns. He had asked her to
drive to a store to buy supplies for the hotel.
July 11: Smolka calls Ocala police and reports his wife missing.
The rented van she was driving is found abandoned and spattered with
blood in the shopping center parking lot.
July 14: A decomposed body matching the description of Betty Anne
Smolka is found off the side of a road in Ocala.
July 16: Her body is identified during an autopsy.
Sept. 6: Betty Anne's father, Willis W. Stephenson, accuses
Thomas Smolka of murdering Betty Anne and sues him for $10 million
on behalf of her three children.
Oct. 11: Ocala Detective K. Gregory Graham names Thomas Smolka as
the chief suspect.
Nov. 20: Smolka is arrested in Wilmington, Del., on a murder
charge.
Dec. 23: Smolka pleads not guilty at his arraignment.
March 1, 1993: Smolka goes on trial for murder, facing a possible
death penalty if convicted.
March 19: A jury, after hearing arguments that Smolka killed his
wife for $500,000 in insurance money, convicts him one week after
his 46th birthday.
March 24: The same jury sentences Smolka to life in prison; he
will not be eligible for parole for 25 years.
Aug. 9, 1995: A three-judge Florida appeals court panel, ruling
that the evidence presented at the trial failed to support a
conviction, reverses the conviction.
Aug. 20: About 100 friends and sympathizers of Betty Anne Smolka
rally in Virginia Beach to protest the Florida ruling that reversed
her husband's conviction.
Wednesday: Smolka walks out of an Ocala courtroom to freedom
after a judge orders him released from custody.
KEYWORDS: MURDER SHOOTING CONVICTION REVERSAL
RELEASE by CNB