William Steven Smith is charged with murder, arson, robbery and other counts in the May 11, 2021, stabbing death of Robert Dale Boyd in North Vernon.
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VERNON — A judge set to preside over a murder trial later this month involving a man who authorities claimed had a “hit list” that included local officials has denied a motion to remove herself from the case. In doing so, the judge also wrote that it was doubtful the accused man actually had a hit list.
Jennings Circuit Judge Murielle Bright on Wednesday denied a motion filed that same day on behalf of accused killer William S. Smith that asked Bright to recuse herself.
Smith, 47, is charged with fatally stabbing Robert Dale Boyd, 56, on May 11, 2021, court records state. Smith is scheduled to stand trial beginning Feb. 27 on charges of murder and felony counts of robbery resulting in serious bodily injury, arson, obstruction of justice and possession of methamphetamine, as well as misdemeanor resisting law enforcement.
On Wednesday, Smith’s public defender, Benjamin Loheide of Columbus, filed a motion asking Bright to disqualify or recuse herself from the case because she is the daughter of former Jennings Circuit Judge Jon Webster, who allegedly had been one of the people named on Smith’s purported hit list.
Webster also had filled in as a special judge earlier in Smith’s case.
Loheide argued that rules in the Indiana Code of Judicial Conduct require a judge to recuse from “any proceeding in which the judge’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned,” including “a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party or a party’s lawyer, or personal knowledge of facts that are in dispute in the proceeding.”
“A reasonable person would expect an individual to have an emotional response if their father was included on an alleged hit list of people someone wanted to kill,” Loheide wrote. “… Should Judge Bright preside over this defendant’s case, any hypothetical conviction would likely not withstand appellate scrutiny, needlessly causing an expensive and emotionally taxing repeated murder trial.”
In her order denying the motion to recuse, Bright wrote that it was filed too late and could have been rejected on that basis alone. “However, since this issue may be one raised on appeal, IF there is a conviction and appeal is taken, the Court will address it further.”
Bright wrote that in a court hearing on Tuesday, the prosecution and defense “acknowledged that there is no actual physical (or electronic format) hit list. That the only mention of (Smith) having a hit list came from the statement of an ex-girlfriend … who does not have a good relationship” with Smith.
Smith, the judge wrote, “denies the existence of any hit list. Thus, where Judge Webster might be on this hit list is even more disputed.”
For more on this story, see Saturday’s Republic.
