Aspiring rapper who turned drug house into slaughterhouse dodges death penalty with last-minute plea

Updated at 1:15 p.m. with plea deal and sentence.

While a Dallas County jury deliberated whether to send Justin Pharez Smith to death row, the aspiring rapper took responsibility for his actions to spare his life.

The jury convicted Smith last week of capital murder in the 2014 deaths of Tyteanna Brown, 21; Kimberly Montgomery, 36; and Demarcus Walton, 37.

Jurors listened to nearly four days of contrasting testimony about Smith's character. They began deliberating his sentence Friday morning and got back to work Saturday morning, after being sequestered to a hotel room Friday night.

But while they were deciding whether Smith's jailhouse Bible studies and his past as a model college student were enough to spare his life, his defense attorneys and the special prosecutors in the case agreed on a plea deal to take the death penalty off the table.

In exchange, Smith would have to confess to shooting four people in the head during a robbery at a Dallas drug house.

Three died, and one played dead to survive. That woman is now blind in one eye and needs help getting dressed. Smith also tried to run over a man as he fled the scene.

Smith pleaded guilty to two pending counts of aggravated assault and one pending count of murder for his actions on Aug. 2, 2014, at a house in the 5100 block of Wynell Street. He also waived all his rights to appeal those three charges or his capital murder conviction.

Dressed in a gray suit and wearing a pastel-colored bow tie, Smith walked to the witness stand and faced the relatives of the people he killed.

"You killed each of these people in cold blood, didn't you?" special prosecutor Edwin King asked.

"Yes, sir," Smith responded.

Smith also admitted that everyone but Montgomery had been asleep when he opened fire. The man he ran over came back to the house after the killings.

After the hearing, state District Judge Jennifer Bennett sentenced Smith to life in prison without the possibility of parole. She also sentenced him to 20 years for each aggravated assault charge and life for the murder charge, which will run concurrent to his capital murder sentence.

Smith then asked if he could address the families of his victims.

"First, I want to apologize. What I did was absolutely horrible, was wrong," Smith said. "I was playing God, and that was wrong  of me. I had no right to take the life of anybody with my own hands."

One relative called Smith a coward before leaving the courtroom. The relatives and surviving victims will have the chance to describe their grief during victim impact statements Monday.

The plea bargain ended what could have been a years-long appellate process for the families and required Smith to publicly admit that he killed three people and seriously injured two others. He can no longer claim innocence.

His mother, Alicia Simon, believes he accepted responsibility to spare his family the possibility of his execution or years of appeals. She said it was hard for her son to take the witness stand and confess to the family members of the three people he killed.

Simon testified during the punishment phase that she had once believed her son was innocent, but after sitting through a week of testimony, she believed otherwise.

"If I were in the jury box, I would've raised my hand, too," she said, wiping away tears.

She looked toward the families of the victims and said, "Every day I look at those families, and I'm so sorry."

Several jurors teared up while Simon spoke and pleaded for her son's life.

"The death penalty doesn't give anybody justice," she said.

In the fight to spare his life, defense attorney Paul Johnson said Smith could do good in prison. The aspiring rapper was once a model college student who performed anti-violence spoken word poetry. He had shown promise, Johnson said. He could do it again.

Smith leads Bible study from behind bars. Fellow inmates described the convicted killer as a positive role model and a man of God.

A former Arkansas state representative, the Rev. Henry "Hank" Wilkins, testified on Smith's behalf. Smith had once preached a sermon at his church in Pine Bluff, Ark.

Wilkins said he shouldn't be put to death.

"Is the execution of one man, one of the Lord's children going to bring back anyone?" Wilkins asked. "It never provides the solace that people are looking for."

Jurors were asked whether Smith's background and assurances that he'll do good in prison were enough to outweigh the other side of Smith — a man who killed three people for money and continues to post rap videos online from jail.

They were asked to look at his background and determine whether Smith would be a continuing threat to society, even while in prison. If not, Smith should be given life in prison without the possibility of parole, his attorneys argued.

"Do we have to kill Justin Smith to protect our society?" Johnson asked.

Defense attorneys Johnson and Lalon Peale argued that Smith will be in a controlled environment in prison. He will be told when to wake up, when to eat, when to sleep.

Smith is "destined to die in prison whether it be natural causes or strapped to a gurney and put down like an animal," Johnson said.

And Johnson pointed to the 15 relatives, friends and even fellow inmates who testified on Smith's behalf.

"We could've brought you 1,500 people," he said. "No one has a bad thing to say about him."

But special prosecutors Josh Healy and King argued that the murders of a father of nine, a mother of four and a young woman who one day wanted to work with kids revealed Smith's true character.

"For the last week, we heard how good of a person the defendant is," Healy said. "Well, ladies and gentlemen, this is what he did."

Healy held up photos of the crime scene in front of the jury and then the autopsy photos of each victim.

"Tyteanna Brown shot in the head. Demarcus Walton shot in the head. Kimberly Montgomery shot in the head," Healy said. "These are the acts of the good man they all talk about."

Before the killings, Smith had been a model student at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, where he was involved in student government, was an active member in his fraternity, regularly attended church and co-founded a group called "Black Male Achievers."

An aspiring rapper, Smith once delivered an anti-violence, anti-drug spoken poetry performance in Washington, D.C.

He was raised by his grandparents in Pine Bluff, where the first rule of the home was to love each other and love God.

The second rule: Obey.

But there was another side of Smith. He brutally attacked a childhood friend in 2011, sold marijuana and rapped about "body bags" and "toe tags." He released his coming-out song, "Fear," the day before the August 2014 killings in southeast Oak Cliff.

And his arrest didn't stop him.

Once in jail, Smith covered himself in tattoos tying himself to a violent street gang. He now has "24" tattooed on his forehead, a small cross under his left eye and the Star of David, used by some gangs, on his right temple. He has similar motifs on his legs and arms, all tattoos done in jail.

Smith, who calls himself 24 Thronez, raps during video chats with someone outside jail and that person posts the videos to YouTube. They're titled "FEARFridays."

The rapper was written up for masturbating in front of a female guard and has been repeatedly disciplined for being disruptive.

A fellow inmate said Smith tried to hire him to kill a surviving witness to the murders.

But that was a side Smith's friends didn't see. All week they beat a path to the witness stand saying that he inspired them to be better people.

"From the moment I met Justin, he demonstrated the qualities of a leader," said Danny Burl III, a college classmate. "He was a motivational force in my life."

Friend after friend said they couldn't imagine how the person they knew could kill three people.

Staff writer Anjulie Van Sickle contributed to this report.