Longest-serving US prisoner dies at 101 after 8 execution stays

Francis Clifford Smith, who spent more than 70 years in custody after being convicted of murder and endured eight scheduled execution dates, has died at age 101. Smith died in his sleep in June 2026 at a Connecticut nursing facility while on supervised parole, closing a case marked by serious questions about his guilt that were never formally resolved.

Smith was convicted in 1950 of the first-degree murder of Grover Hart, a night watchman killed during a 1949 robbery at a yacht club in Greenwich, Connecticut. Sentenced to death at age 25, Smith was scheduled for execution eight separate times over the following four years. Each time, he received a last meal, but each execution was stayed. In July 1954, his head had been shaved for the electric chair when Major Leo Carroll, the police officer who had interrogated him, dramatically intervened before the Board of Pardons to declare his belief in Smith's innocence. "I'm not even sure he was present at the murder," Carroll stated. Following this, and amid growing doubts-including witnesses recanting testimony and another inmate confessing to the killing-Smith's death sentence was commuted to life in prison.