Jury deadlocked in sex crime trial for FCI Dublin officer 'Dirty Dick'
Former FCI Dublin correctional officer Darrell Wayne "Dirty Dick" Smith enters the Oakland federal courthouse on March 18, 2025, the second day of his sex crime trial.
OAKLAND, Calif. - A federal judge in Oakland on Monday declared a mistrial after jurors were unable to reach a verdict in the case of a former FCI Dublin prison guard charged with 15 counts of sexual abuse.
Darrell Wayne Smith, nicknamed "Dirty Dick," is the only one of the eight former FCI Dublin correctional officers not to have been found guilty of similar crimes. The other seven, including the former warden, either all pleaded guilty to sex crimes or were found guilty by juries.
Michelle Lo of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California told KTVU that the jury "hung on all counts," and that a new trial is set for Sept. 15.
A mistrial means that a person is neither guilty nor innocent; only that a jury couldn't unanimously decide, and it's up to the prosecutors to decide whether they want to retry a case, which they do in this case.
During the trial, Smith maintained his innocence, and his defense team argued that the women who testified against him were felons, motivated to lie, as many of them also won a portion of a $116 million settlement with the Bureau of Prisons, and there was no physical evidence to support their allegations.
Smith has been out of custody since charges were filed against him in 2023, and he will be allowed to return home to Florida until his second trial begins in the courtroom of U.S. District Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers.
Smith also told KTVU he felt that the coverage against him had been unfair.
It's unclear what the jury split was, but court records showed they had questions about what "reasonable doubt" and "speculation" meant. They had deliberated since April 7.
One juror told the East Bay Times that the settlements received by incarcerated women who sued the BOP claiming the prison fostered a climate of abuse and retaliation played a "huge part" in believing their testimony.
Several formerly incarcerated women, including Kendra Drysdale, directly blamed the prosecutors for not trying hard enough to win the case, not calling up better rebuttal witnesses, not calling whistle-blowers to testify and relying mostly on women who won the settlement to testify, when there were plenty of other alleged victims of Smith to call to the stand.
Federal prosecutors charged Smith in a 15-count indictment – the most counts of the seven other correctional officers.
Testimony from a dozen women during the trial, which began on March 17, revealed that he peeled back shower curtains to masturbate at the prison, spanked them in their cells and withheld their mail if they wouldn't flash their breasts or have sexual encounters with him.
Women also testified that Smith, who often came to work dressed as a cowboy, would sexually abuse them and "walk around, like he owned that place."
The exact charges are abusive sexual contact, sexual abuse of a ward, aggravated sexual abuse and deprivation of rights under color of law.
Smith's defense team's tactics - painting the women as liars and pointing out there was no physical evidence to support their claims – were also employed by former Warden Ray Garcia, who was also found guilty in December 2022 and sentenced to nearly six years in prison.
Unlike the warden, Smith did not take the stand to testify.
Jury deliberating sex abuse case of FCI Dublin officer 'Dirty Dick'
Jury deliberating sex abuse case of FCI Dublin officer Darrell Wayne 'Dirty Dick' Smith.
One of Smith's victims, Cassandra, spoke at a small rally in front of the federal courthouse as the jury was in its second day of deliberations.
Cassandra said it felt "empowering" to look Smith in the eye for the first time since being released from prison.
"At first, I thought like I wasn't going to look at him, or I was going to be afraid," she said. "But then, once the opportunity was there, it felt very empowering. I definitely locked eyes with him a couple of times and I just, it felt good, honestly."
She testified in graphic detail about how she had to endure Smith's "horrific and disgusting abuse" from 2019 to her release in March 2021.
One of those examples, she described, was how he would follow her to her cell after a shower and watch her put on lotion or get undressed before asking for oral sex.
When she initially rejected him, she said, Smith got vindictive and angry.
She said she didn't want to jeopardize her release from prison and reluctantly gave in.
She also testified how he would touch himself in front of her and ultimately raped her for the first time in 2020.
"I remember it hurting and wanting him to stop," she testified. "I felt shame wash over me."
As for the defense strategy of calling women like her liars and convicted felons?
"I found it tacky and bully-ish," Cassandra said outside court.
And she said it would be nice if Smith ended up addressing the women, even apologizing to them, at some point.
"I think that it would offer some closure for sure," she said. "Like, we've all been made out to be liars and all kinds of other things. It would be a piece of closure to finally have him be held accountable and say the truth and admit that we just exposed the truth. You know, that we're not liars and everything."
FCI Dublin is now empty.
The Bureau of Prisons shut down the all-women's prison in April 2024, after the then-director said she couldn't fix the problems or the culture there.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This story was updated on April 17 to include a juror's comment reported in the East Bay Times and a comment Smith made to KTVU.