Miami-Dade County: Corey Smith pleads to lower charges
According to news reports, the State agreed to vacate Smith’s prior first-degree murder convictions and Smith pled guilty to second-degree murder and other lesser charges and a 30-year sentence.
As TFDP previously covered in late 2024, news reports indicated the State waived the death penalty against Corey Smith after the trial court found prosecutorial misconduct and disqualified prosecutors. Smith has been back in the trial court since he was granted a new penalty phase under Hurst.1 The docket confirms the waiver was announced on November 13.
Smith had a pending Motion to Vacate Judgment and Sentence that was filed in January 2024. A status conference was set for today.
At the State Attorney’s direction, an investigation was completed in Smith’s case that culminated in a memo dated January 10, 2025, which is available from WPLG here. In that memo, prosecutors discuss the challenges the State would face State in a new trial. According to a report from the Miami Herald, prosecutors announced at the conference that they could not proceed “with Corey Smith’s re-sentencing trial for reasons ranging from dead and uncooperative witnesses, to a questionable jailhouse phone call between an informant and the state’s lead prosecutor.”
According to news reports, the State and Smith entered into an agreement under which the State agreed to vacate Smith’s prior first-degree murder convictions and Smith pled guilty to second-degree murder and other lesser charges. He also agreed to serve a 30-year prison sentence. According to the Miami Herald, “With time served since his 2005 conviction, that would only mean five more years in prison for Smith on the state charge. Smith, however, was sentenced to 60 years in prison on a separate federal racketeering and gun charges case in 2001.” The new state sentence runs concurrently with the federal sentence.
The docket shows the following:
