Renee Beth Smith
Had drugged her baby in
earlier days

‘Cold choice’
led to infant’s
murder

Renee Beth Smith often
tried to get rid of the 'excess
baggage in her life'

By Susan Kreifels
Star Bulletin

Renee Beth Smith, a 20-year-old wife, had found a Marine boyfriend while her Navy husband was away on temporary duty, and the two went clubbing often, naval criminal investigators said.

Sixteen baby sitters -- family, friends, the godmother, her boyfriend -- helped Smith take care of her 3-month-old baby, Shiann, and the mother was rarely alone with her daughter, investigators said.

Smith's background was pieced together by the investigators, who concluded that Smith decided marriage and motherhood had been a mistake.

She and her husband had agreed to divorce. But there was the baby.

"When you hear about a mother killing an infant, you think, "Wow, she must have just snapped,'" assistant U.S. attorney Loretta Matsunaga said yesterday in federal court. "She was making a lifestyle choice."

U.S. District Judge David Ezra sentenced Smith yesterday to 17 years in prison for second-degree murder, the top end of the federal sentencing guidelines set for Smith.

The minimum punishment was 14 years. The charge could have brought life imprisonment.

On Sept. 22, 1997, when Renee Beth Smith and her friend went to pick up divorce papers, Smith said she wished she never had a baby, say naval investigators.

The next day, the friend, staying with Smith in her Hale Moku Housing area at Pearl Harbor, and Smith took turns watching Shiann while they dressed, and then the two bathed and dressed the baby, according to investigators.

They gave Shiann a juice bottle and put her in the crib about 2 p.m., and the women chatted downstairs. Smith later returned to the crib, pushed Shiann's face into a folded comforter, and suffocated the sleeping baby, investigators said.

Matsunaga said Smith had drugged Shiann in earlier days with Vicks Formula 44 cough syrup, children's Tylenol and brandy. "This was pure, unadulterated selfishness," Matsunaga said. "A cold choice."

"There's absolutely no question that Ms. Smith was utterly and absolutely unprepared for and incapable of the responsibility of being a mother," Ezra said.

Ezra said Smith had a "difficult upbringing. She lacked attention and care. She was never given proper parameters.

"In her own mind there was little difference between dealing with her child and dealing with her friends, a lack of maturity to an almost awesome degree," Ezra said. "Sadly, Shiann became excess baggage in her life."

The motivation, Ezra said, was selfishness. "I can't forget Shiann. Anything less than the maximum penalty would be one of the grossest misjustices."

Smith was originally charged with first-degree murder and could have received the death sentence. U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno decided in May 1998 not to seek the death penalty.

In a plea agreement last December, Smith pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.

Smith, with short blond hair, wore a sweat shirt and pants yesterday. Ezra said seeing "someone so frail and young" potentially facing a death sentence had been for him "astounding. I've never gotten over it. I've never seen that kind of dichotomy."

Ezra ordered that Smith be treated in a mental health program.

Her husband and Shiann's father, Brian Smith, attended the sentencing.

Smith's defense attorney, Peter Wolff, told Ezra it was hard to know what to say in such a case. Wolff, who asked for a 14-year sentence, said that historically a mother killing her baby has been tied to a defense of temporary insanity or irresistible impulses.

Smith wanted a baby, Wolff said, but found herself unable to cope with one. "She found herself disconnected from her infant, feeling incompetent and overwhelmed."

At one point she told a neighbor that she "almost smothered Shiann again." The neighbor called authorities, who told the neighbor to "keep an eye on the situation."

"If the intervention had been different," Wolff said, "there might have been a different outcome."

But Matsunaga said Smith had been surrounded by people helping her.

Smith did not make a statement yesterday, but instead wrote a letter to Ezra on her own behalf.