WOODSTOCK – About 11 a.m., jurors began deliberating murder charges against Tim Smith, who is accused of killing a man who answered an ad Smith placed online for sex with his wife.
Smith has been charged with first-degree murder, but jurors can also consider a lesser charge of second-degree murder for the May 28, 2011 death of Kurt Milliman.
Smith's wife, Kim Smith, testified Wednesday that Milliman had come to the home on Doty Road near Woodstock to have sex with her. Although she previously had sex for money with about 50 men, she was pregnant didn't want to continue, so she asked Milliman to leave, she said.
While near the front door, she said Milliman tried to give her money to continue, but she refused and he grabbed her arm, pulling her back and slapping her in the face.
She told him to get his hands off of her, and Tim Smith came around the corner with the gun.
Milliman was shot once in the back.
Tim Smith's attorney, Assistant Public Defender Kim Messer, said that the defense and prosecution agree on many of the facts of the case, but it all comes down to interpretation of the evidence.
Smith came around the corner and saw a 378-pound, 6-foot-6 man who was drunk cornering his wife.
"Mr. Smith is relentless in his assertion of defending his wife," Messer said. "You can't count how many times he says in his interview."
Messer acknowledged that Tim Smith initially lied to police, saying that he didn't know why Milliman was in the home. But he did so because he was ashamed of what he and his wife had been doing and didn't want people to know, she said.
Shooting Milliman was instinct, Messer said.
"The minute [Milliman's] asked to leave and he refuses, he's an intruder," she said. "And you have the right to defend against an intruder."
During his rebuttal argument, Assistant State's Attorney Michael Combs told Tim Smith to stop crying.
"This guy is going to sit here and cry now?" Combs said. "[He] puts pictures of his pregnant wife on the Internet and invites strangers to have sex with her."
Combs pointed out the staging of the scene by Tim Smith, such as throwing a desktop computer onto the floor and then pushing a dryer on top of it, as well as breaking a window.
"You think this guy's got a conscience?" Combs said. "You think he'd hesitate one second to plug a guy in the back?"
All of that was done while Milliman was lying on the floor, bleeding out.
"Show this pimp that what he did was unacceptable," Combs told the jury.
Kimberly Smith has been charged with several offenses including prostitution, but not murder.
She was granted immunity for what she said on the stand. Her case is pending.
