Andy Young: Seventy-six very long years

By Andy Young

A study on centenarians conducted by the Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine at Boston University revealed there were 89,739 Americans aged 100 years or older in 2021. If they all lived in the same community, it would be America’s 400th-largest city, bigger than Danbury, Connecticut; Ogden, Utah; and Bloomington, Minnesota, but not quite as large as Santa Fe, New Mexico.

However, America’s total population when that study was released was 336,997,624, meaning a miniscule 0.027 percent of Americans, or about one out of every 5000, will live 10 decades or more. The chances of seeing 100 candles atop one’s birthday cake are slender, but they’re even longer for certain people.

Like, for example, those residing on death row.

Francis Clifford Smith was three months shy of his 102nd birthday when he died this past June. He had been convicted of killing a security guard during a botched robbery in 1949 and was subsequently sentenced to death. The state of Connecticut set an actual execution date for Smith eight times. On each occasion he got a reprieve, although the last one came a mere two hours before he had been scheduled to be strapped into the electric chair.

At the time of his death, Smith was living at the secure nursing home to which he had been paroled. All told, he spent more than 76 years of his 37,187-day life incarcerated. That’s a very long time, particularly if he didn’t commit the crime he was convicted of, which seems likely to have been the case.

Frank Smith was hardly a model citizen. He was sent to reform school before he turned 12. Later, while doing time at a youth reformatory, he escaped and assaulted a guard in the process. That earned him a four-year prison term. When he got out, he toiled as a numbers runner for some racketeers involved in illegal gambling.

On July 23, 1949, two men broke into the Indian Harbor Yacht Club in Greenwich, where they were surprised by Grover Hart, the night watchman. One or both robbers shot the 68-year-old, but before he died Hart told the police one of the burglars was wearing a bandanna, a bit of attire Smith was known to favor. He and his accused accomplice, George Lowden, were arrested for the crime, but Lowden subsequently made a deal, pleading guilty to second-degree murder and saying his partner did the shooting. Smith was convicted and sentenced to death.

Smith steadfastly maintained his innocence, and several post-trial developments suggested he was telling the truth. Lowden refused to testify at Smith’s trial, and three years after the conviction, a Connecticut-born inmate serving time in an Alabama prison for armed robbery confessed that he had been Mr. Lowden’s accomplice and was the actual triggerman.

The State Police Major who had interrogated Smith after he was arrested became convinced of his innocence, but Smith’s appeals were all denied. He never got another trial and was never exonerated, living out his remaining 76 years in confinement, eating meals that cost Connecticut taxpayers approximately $3 per day. He was haunted by dreams of dying in the electric chair. 

“It cooks you,” he told interviewers on more than one occasion.

Connecticut no longer has a death penalty. Nor, for that matter, does Maine, but 27 states still do. Proponents of capital punishment accurately point out that state-sponsored executions eliminate the possibility of violent criminals reoffending, but those opposed to permanently dispatching convicted murderers have what many would consider a more compelling argument: there’s no way of unkilling someone who’s been put to death for a crime they didn’t commit. <