South Carolina man who killed State Police officer pleads guilty, avoids death penalty

A South Carolina man pleaded guilty Friday to gunning down a New Mexico State Police officer who had stopped to help him with a flat tire last year.

The plea deal, offered to Jaremy Smith by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Mexico, took the death penalty off the table — in lieu of life in prison.

The family of officer Justin Hare, 35, told the Journal that they had wanted Smith put to death for killing their son, a father of two, and stealing his police SUV and leaving him on the side of the highway.

“I still wish he was dead,” Jim Hare said outside the U.S. District Courthouse in Downtown Albuquerque. “My wish is to watch them put him on a chair, or something, and we look in his eyes while he dies.”

Smith pleaded guilty Friday to carjacking resulting in death, using a firearm in a crime of violence, kidnapping resulting in death, being a felon in possession of a firearm and possession of a stolen firearm in the March 15, 2023, incident.

The minimum and maximum penalty, according to the plea agreement, were the same: to never again be a free man. Smith’s sentencing hearing is set for 90 days from Friday.

The death penalty is still an option for the 34-year-old elsewhere, as he faces possible state and federal charges in Marion, S.C., in the kidnapping and death of Phonesia Machado-Fore, 52, a paramedic.

The Marion County Sheriff’s Office, in a statement Friday, called the plea an “incredible step forward” and said “charges are still pending” against Smith in Machado-Fore’s death.

Authorities say Smith killed Machado-Fore and took her BMW cross-country to see a former girlfriend in Albuquerque, ending with a flat tire on Interstate 40, near Tucumcari. After killing Hare, stealing his police SUV and crashing it, Smith broke into a cabin and stole a truck to drive to Albuquerque.

The Bernalillo County deputies shot Smith the next day during a foot chase through a West Side neighborhood.

State Police Chief Troy Weisler said that Smith “will never take another breath as a free man, and rightfully so.”

“There is no place in our society for cold-blooded killers, which is exactly what he is, a ruthless murderer who took the lives of two of this country’s finest servants,” he said.

‘Guilty’

On Friday, the courtroom seating was overflowing with fully-uniformed State Police officers and, amid the sea of black and silver, Jim and Terry Hare sat between Alexander Uballez, U.S. Attorney for the District of New Mexico, and Jason Bowie, Cabinet Secretary for the state’s Department of Public Safety.

Smith, sporting a scraggly beard and short dreadlocks, stood beside defense attorney Devon Fooks in a yellow jumpsuit with his hands and feet shackled. For the most part, Smith only said, “Yes, sir,” in a deep Southern drawl when asked questions about his understanding of the plea.

“What does he get out of this?” U.S. District Judge James Browning asked Fooks, referring to the plea agreement. Fooks replied that the possibility of the death penalty for Smith had been squashed.

Uballez said several things are considered in taking away the death penalty: consultation with the families and survivors and analysis of the facts and law, among other factors. Uballez indicated that there was a driving reason behind Smith’s case but that it is confidential. The final decision was made by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Hare’s mother, Terry Hare, said she was told a big reason was that Smith was a special needs student and, as a child, on an Individualized Education Program. Hare, a special education teacher herself, said she didn’t feel the U.S. Attorney’s Office “took into an account of what an IEP is” and it shouldn’t have been a factor.

Hare said she wished they made a different choice, adding “we were upset.”

Federal prosecutor Jack Burkhead read Smith’s admission of facts from the plea agreement, tracing his path from South Carolina to New Mexico. As he detailed Hare being shot, carjacked and left to die — Terry Hare wiped away tears, her lips pursed, eyes staring ahead.

Uballez put his hand on Hare’s shoulder at one point, while she looked at Smith across the room. During the formulaic retelling of his crimes, Smith appeared to close his eyes or stare down at the table. Smith looked up once, with fervor, when Burkhead read, “all of which I inflicted,” detailing the gunshot wounds to Hare’s head and neck.

Afterward, Browning asked Smith how he pleaded to the crimes. “Guilty,” Smith said in the same drawl heard in officer Hare’s lapel video, asking “I got a flat tire, you can help me?”

Outside the courthouse, law enforcement leaders thanked authorities locally and in South Carolina for their work on the case, the Bernalillo County deputies who captured Smith and the West Side gas station clerk who recognized him and called 911.

But Raul Bujanda, special agent in charge of the Albuquerque FBI office, lamented that any of it had to happen.

“I wish that we weren’t here today. I wish that such evil would not exist in our world, and yet it does,” he said. “I wish I could have met Justin and Phoenicia. I wish I could have warned them about Jaremy Smith.”