NANCY SMITH: SENTENCED TO 30 TO 90 YEARS IN PRISON FOR SEXUALLY ABUSING YOUNG CHILDREN. A CRIME SHE DID NOT COMMIT
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Nancy Smith was convicted of sexually abusing young children. A crime she did not commit. Nancy, a single mom raising four kids,
drove a school bus for the Ohio Head Start program in Lorain. She was convicted along with Joseph Allen, a man with a previous
record as a sex offender. A man she had never met.
The prosecutors accused her of not dropping off all of the children from
her bus at school. Instead, they accused her of keeping three or four of them on the bus and then dropping them off at a secret
location where she and Mr. Allen sexually abused them.
The investigation began in 1993, when a mother of a five-year-old girl
claimed that her daughter told her that instead of going to school that day, her bus driver, Nancy, had taken her to a “Joseph’s”
house where she was molested. Police investigated and found that nothing unusual had happened that day. Nancy had driven
her regular bus route and was accompanied by another adult.
The mother then went to the media and the story became headline news.
At this time other parents came forward, all alleging abuse of their children although the details of their stories differed from
one another.
A short while later, Mr. Allen walked into the Lorain police station to report a stolen car. He fit some of
the children’s descriptions and the police took note of his prior conviction on molestation charges. Mr. Allen said he had never
met Nancy. Nine of ten children failed to pick Mr. Allen out of a photo lineup. At a live lineup only three out of seven
picked him. (It was later proven that they had been openly coached by their parents to pick Mr. Allen). The police arrested
Mr. Allen anyway. They had their man.
Nancy and Mr. Allen went on trial together in July of 1994. After eight days of testimony
the jurors took only six hours to find them both guilty on all counts. Mr. Allen was sentenced to five consecutive life sentences.
Nancy was given thirty to ninety years.
In June 2003, four of the parents of the abused children each won a judgment for $1.5
million against the operator of the Head Start program. In 2004, the same families won the same judgment against Mr. Allen.
They have also sued Cuyahoga County, Ohio for $5 million.
This case had all of the elements of a wrongful conviction: unreliable
children witnesses, police tunnel vision, parents using the legal system to enrich themselves, prosecutors who withheld evidence,
and a total lack of common sense by defense attorneys.
When Nancy was up for resentencing, the judge, after reexamining the case
stated, “I have absolutely no confidence that these verdicts are correct statements.” He then took the unprecedented step of asking
Nancy’s lawyers to make a motion to vacate Nancy’s conviction and for a judgment of acquittal. On June 24, 2009, the judge acquitted
Nancy (and Mr. Allen) on the spot. Nancy had spent 15 years in prison for a crime she did not commit.
Convicted: 1994
Exonerated: 2009