Smith v. Commonwealth

MILLIKEN, Chief Justice.

The appellant, Billy Smith, was sentenced to life imprisonment for assaulting with intent to rob, on March 30, 1963, an 86-year old woman who lived alone in an isolated section of Adair County. The elderly woman was tortured in an attempt to force her to disclose the location of about $5,000 in cash which she supposedly had stashed away in her home, part of the proceeds from old age pension payments which she saved because she “did not know what time the old age would stop on me * * * and I didn’t dress it out and I didn’t run around on the strength of it * * *. I…