The oldest prisoner in the US has died: he spent 75 years in prison

The oldest prisoner in the United States, Francis Clifford Smith, died of natural causes after spending more than 75 years in prison. He was sentenced to death eight times, and each time he ate the "last supper", but the execution was always postponed.

Smith spent more than 75 years in a Connecticut prison. He was first sentenced to death in 1950. However, until the end of his life, he insisted that he was imprisoned for a murder he did not commit. His case has been shrouded in doubt for decades.

In the early hours of July 23, 1949, a robbery occurred at a yacht club in Greenwich, and night watchman Grover Hart was shot and killed. Smith, 25, was found guilty of the murder. Hart was killed by a .22 caliber revolver, but another bullet and four shell casings found at the scene were from a different gun. This led the court to conclude that there were two perpetrators.

The suspect, George Lowden, pleaded guilty. Smith was convicted on the basis of circumstantial evidence. One of the murder weapons was found in a gray Cadillac parked in front of a cafe in upstate New York, along with jewelry and other items stolen from a yacht club. Smith had been seen at the cafe earlier. A shirt believed to be his was also found in the car. This evidence was sufficient to convict him.

Smith's execution date was set eight times and postponed eight times. In 1954, his death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. In 1967, he escaped from prison and spent 12 days at large. In 1975, Smith was released on parole. However, about 10 months later, he was returned to prison on charges of theft and illegal possession of weapons.

In Osborne Prison, Smith was nicknamed the "Osborne Birdman." He hid bread in his clothes and fed birds. Prison guards knew about this and turned a blind eye to it. Smith was only released from prison in 2020. But he continued to live under supervision in a nursing home. He died in his sleep in late June 2026, at the age of 101.