America’s Longest-Serving Prisoner Dies At 101 After Dodging Execution 8 Times

The man believed to hold the record for the longest prison sentence served died while incarcerated just months before his 102nd birthday.

Francis Clifford Smith died in June after serving seventy years in prison and avoiding execution on eight different occasions. Smith was sentenced to death when he was twenty-five years old for the fatal shooting of Grover Hart, a 68-year-old security guard for a yacht club in Connecticut during an attempted robbery on July 23, 1949. George Lowden was also arrested in connection with Hart’s death, but took a plea deal that implicated Smith.

The Boston Globe reported that over the course of seventy years, Smith was scheduled for execution eight times, but was repeatedly spared. Questions around Smith’s innocence helped secure the many stays of execution. Smith maintained his innocence to the day that he died, telling the Boston Globe, “I’m in here on no evidence at all.” 

One of the officers who had interrogated Smith after his arrest and before his eighth scheduled execution said, “I’m not even sure he was present at the murder.” However, a judge who reviewed another man’s confession to the murder of Hart said it wasn’t credible, leaving Smith’s murder conviction intact. 

Besides a brief ten-month parole in 1975 and twelve days in 1967, Smith was behind bars for seventy years. His parole ended when he was arrested on larceny and weapon charges. He also managed to escape prison for about two weeks in 1967. Smith later declined parole, but he said he could not remember doing so. In 2020, he was transferred to supervised parole at a secured Connecticut nursing facility that cares for elderly prisoners. 

One of Connecticut’s Department of Correction public information officers told the BBC that Smith was “101 and a half. He did pretty well as far as longevity is concerned.”

Smith died in his sleep and was cremated. “He had very limited family involvement around his passing, but we assured it was appropriate, met his wishes, and was dignified,” said the nursing home’s spokesman, David Skoczulek.