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Samuel Smithers: The Age of Mercy

Samuel Smithers: The Age of Mercy

Last updated on: October 13, 2025 at 1:26 pm by Jeff Hood

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Samuel Smithers: The Age of Mercy 2025-10-13T13:26:53-06:00 Jeff Hood

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Samuel Smithers

Department of Corrections

The Age of Samuel Smithers

The Day Approaches

On October 14, 2025, Samuel Lee Smithers, 72, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at Florida State Prison. Convicted in 1999 for the murders of Christy Cowan and Denise Roach in Hillsborough County, he has spent more than 26 years on death row. The world outside has turned…seasons have passed…generations have changed…and yet the machinery of death remains ready, cold and unyielding. We are called to ponder what justice demands when decades have passed…when the offender has aged…and when the purpose of punishment has been diminished by time itself.

Remembering the Samuel Smithers’ Victims

We must remember Christy Cowan and Denise Roach, whose lives were violently taken. Their families continue to live with grief that no sentence can erase. The wounds remain raw. The memories vivid. Justice must honor them. But even in honoring their lives, the state must discern whether executing a frail elderly man decades after the crimes fulfills the true purpose of justice…or simply enacts symbolic wrath. To execute an elderly man who has lived decades behind bars risks turning society’s response into a spectacle rather than a righteous act.

The Weight of Time

When Smithers was sentenced, he was 45. Since then, he has grown older within the confines of stone walls and iron doors, trapped in endless repetition and deprivation. Time has bent his body and mind. At 72, he is frail, removed from the life he once knew…and unlikely…even unable…to harm anyone again. Capital punishment is meant to serve deterrence and retribution. Yet decades later, deterrence falters…and retribution loses clarity. The years have made Smithers a shadow of the man who committed these crimes. His execution can no longer prevent harm, shape behavior or restore what was lost. Time itself has rendered the act morally and practically different from the punishment intended at sentencing.

Samuel Smithers: Life at 72 on Death Row

Envisioning life at 72 behind the walls of death row is to step into a hell most will never know. Every day stretches endlessly in silence, punctuated by the clanging of doors, the monotony of regimented routines and the extended absence of outside human interaction. The body that once moved with strength and purpose now aches with infirmity…muscles stiffen, joints protest and energy wanes. Memory and mind bear the wear of decades…cycling through old regrets, fleeting joys and the haunting awareness of one’s own mortality.

Every day presses down with silent futility, where even the simplest choices…selecting a book, sharing a word or choosing a meal…are stripped away. The mind can spiral into reflection on what was lost, what might have been and the inevitability of further horrors. Each meal, each sound and each flicker of light is a reminder of the slow passage of time in a space where freedom is forever denied.

Samuel Smithers’ Age and the Limits of Retribution

Retribution is intended to balance moral scales, yet advanced age transforms the measure. Smithers’ life is already profoundly constrained by his confinement. Executing him now risks crossing the line from proportionate justice into ritualized cruelty. Even punishment for the gravest crimes…when decades have passed and the offender has aged into frailty…demand reconsideration. When justice disregards the passage of time and the frailty of age, it quickly risks sliding into cruelty.

Society’s Evolving Standards

Society recognizes vulnerability in the young, the disabled and the elderly. Across the country, it is almost unheard of for those over 70 to be executed…only a handful, fewer than two dozen, have faced the death penalty since 1976, representing a fraction of a percent of all cases (Death Penalty Information Center, 2025). This rarity is not incidental…it reflects an ethical intuition that some lives…by virtue of age, vulnerability and distance from their crimes…merit mercy and measured restraint. To execute Smithers is to flout the evolved conscience of society…and to ignore the principle that justice must be righteous and tempered with care.

Ethics, Mercy and Justice for Samuel Smithers

Smithers has lived much of his adult life behind bars. Each day has added layers of experience and reflection, humanizing him in ways the trial could never account for. At the same time, Cowan and Roach’s families continue to carry grief and trauma that no sentence can erase. Their suffering is real. Their pain is visible. Yet ethical judgment demands that punishment retain purpose and proportion. To execute a frail elderly man for crimes committed decades earlier risks trampling on the principle that justice should be measured, meaningful and humane. Accountability and mercy are not opposites…they are complementary. Justice that ignores time and age ignores both accountability and mercy.

Closing Reflection

In the quiet weighing of justice, we must hold both grief and humanity in balance. Christy Cowan and Denise Roach’s lives were stolen…their absence leaves wounds no passage of time can heal. Yet to execute a man who has spent decades confined, whose body and mind have been worn down by years of isolation, is not only to punish…it is to risk transforming justice into spectacle, retribution into ritual. True justice honors the victims without compounding suffering. It recognizes that accountability does not require cruelty, and that time itself alters the meaning of punishment. In Smithers’ final hours, society faces a test…to act out of symbolic vengeance or to exercise measured humane judgment that preserves both conscience and compassion. The choices we make in such moments reveal not only our sense of justice but our humanity itself.

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*If you would like to support the Execution Intervention Project (the organization that financially supports Dr. Hood’s work), click here.

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About The Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood

The Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood is a theologian, writer and activist who has spent years ministering to people on death row. As a spiritual advisor and witness to executions, he speaks out against state violence and calls for a society rooted in justice, mercy and the sacredness of life. You can read more about the author here.

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