Really? Boy asked Judge to keep mum in Prison
When Bradyn Smith was 4, his father put him in time-out and
his mother got mad.
He said he heard his parents fighting. He said he saw his
father shove his mother. Then, he said, he watched his mother grab a knife,
drive it through his father’s chest and toss it into the sink.
His mother, Shannon Smith, now 29, was convicted of
voluntary manslaughter and tampering with evidence in the 2009 slaying. She was
sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Smith appeared Wednesday in court in Warren County, Ohio, to
ask for early release. In anticipation, her now 10-year-old son, Bradyn, penned
a letter to the judge, asking him to keep his mother behind bars.
“Dear Judge Peeler: I feel that my mom should stay in prison
because I seen her stab my dad clean through the heart with my sister in his
arms,” Bradyn wrote in pencil. “…Life for me would be 10 times better if mom
didn’t kill my dad because that took a big amount of happiness out of mine and
my sister’s life.”
At Wednesday’s hearing, the judge set Smith’s release date
for December 2016, marking seven years of incarceration, her attorney, Charlie
Rittgers, said. For three years after her release, she will be on community
control, which is similar to probation, and she will be on house arrest the
first year.
“We’re happy that the decision was made to let her out
early,” he said. “We know it was a difficult decision for everyone involved.
Hopefully she can start to mend her relationships and reunite with her
children.”
Takach’s mother, Patty Todd, said in an interview after the
hearing that she was still in shock.
“The judge said she needed to be out to be there for her
children — but her children are afraid of her,” Todd said. “She took a life in
front of her children. The court just disregarded the children’s lives, my
son’s life.”
By most accounts, Smith and Takach had a rough relationship.
The two met when they were children and, in 2004, had one of their own: Bradyn.
The new parents moved in together and, in 2007, had a girl, whom they name
Brooklynn.
But violence, drugs and alcohol kept coming between them.
In 2008, Takach was ordered to undergo treatment at a
rehabilitation center in Ohio, according to a 2011 court opinion.
Three months later, Takach went home. Smith, however, had
moved on and was pregnant with another man’s child.
Regardless, in January 2009, Takach was at her doorstep with
his belongings.
“Smith did not want Takach to move back in, because she
wanted to start a new life,” according to the 2011 opinion from now-retired
Judge William Young of Ohio’s 12th District Court of Appeals. “However, she did
not ‘say anything because [she] didn’t want there to be a problem’ and so she
agreed to let Takach stay for a day so he could spend some time with their
children.”
It was Jan. 29, 2009, and the two were fighting in the
apartment in Franklin, about 20 miles from Dayton. Smith later told police that
Takach started “pushing” her on the stomach, asking, “How could [she] do this
to him?” according to the court document.
She said he grabbed her throat. She said she could not
breathe or tell him to stop, so she pulled a knife and swung it, intending to
cut his arm, the court document said.
When investigators arrived at the scene, then-4-year-old
Bradyn told them that “his mommy stabbed his daddy and put the knife in the
sink,” according to the document.
Smith was charged with murder, voluntary manslaughter and
tampering with evidence. At trial, she was acquitted of murder but convicted on
the other two charges and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
“The jury found in the case that the crime was a result of
serious provocation, which is a mitigating factor but not an excuse for
Shannon’s actions; she realizes that,” Rittgers said before Wednesday’s
hearing. “She has spent every day thinking about her wrongdoing, and she’ll
think about this regardless of the outcome.
“She’ll think about this until the day she dies.”
Still, Takach’s family feared an early release.
“She knew when she did this it would devastate the people
who once loved her. She did it to her children. She did it to her family,” Todd
said before the hearing. “It’s just not justice. At least we should get the
justice that was handed out.”
“In another five years, Bradyn will be 15; Brooklynn will be
13,” she added. “They’ll be older and better able to handle the situation.
They’re afraid of her, and I don’t want them to have to go through that.”
Several weeks ago, Todd told Bradyn that his mother was
trying to get out of prison.
“I don’t believe in keeping secrets from Bradyn,” she said.
“I felt the need to tell him his mother may be able to get out of prison. When
I told him, he wound up crying in my lap for an hour.”
Bradyn told Todd that he wanted to talk to the judge.
Instead, the court encouraged him to write a letter.
The letter, scribbled on two pages torn from a notebook and
shared with The Washington Post, is filled with Bradyn’s memories of his father
— and mentions of the new memories he would have made if his father “was still
here.”
“I think it would be better for me and my sister if my mom
would stay in prison,” he wrote in the letter, “because I am afraid of her
because I have seen what she did to my dad.”
Todd read the letter at Wednesday’s hearing. Asked what the
judge said, she replied: “Nothing. Nothing.”
But Smith’s attorney said the letter rattled his client.
“She cried throughout the hearing,” Rittgers said. “It was
difficult, obviously, to hear the pain people have gone through. It was
difficult hearing that letter, as it would have been difficult for any mother
to hear.”
But Rittgers said that in the presence of Smith’s family,
Bradyn shows a different sentiment.
“Obviously he’s nervous, but he has told them he’s excited
to see his mother,” he said.
Source: AP