Jury Urges Death Penalty for Boy’s Killer : Courts: Gregory Scott Smith sobs as the verdict is read. Attorneys for both sides predict that the judge will follow the recommendation.

A Ventura County jury recommended Tuesday that Gregory Scott Smith be sentenced to die in the gas chamber for kidnaping, raping and murdering an 8-year-old Northridge boy and setting his body on fire near Simi Valley two years ago.

Smith, 23, a former Canoga Park day-care aide, sagged and sobbed loudly under the arm of his attorney as Judge Steven Z. Perren read the verdict, which the jury reached after two months of testimony and less than eight hours of deliberations.

Mary Bailly, who had sat quietly through the penalty trial of her son’s admitted murderer, clasped her hand to her mouth and shook with sobs as the jury was polled.

And the defendant’s mother, Sherron Smith, clutched a handkerchief and wept on the shoulder of one of her daughters while his father, Marvin Smith, leaned back and covered his eyes with his hand.

“We the jury in the above entitled cause fix the penalty at death,” Perren said, announcing the first verdict of death entered in Ventura County since 1990, when Larry David Davis was sentenced to die for killing Oxnard waitress Dawn Michelle Holman.

Afterward, attorneys on both sides predicted that Perren would follow the jury’s recommendation and sentence Smith to death, although the law does not bind him to it. Sentencing is scheduled for Feb. 28.

“I hope that he’ll think that the verdict is excess,” defense attorney James M. Farley said. “(But) I don’t think that’ll happen. I think he’ll respect the jury verdict.”

The jury of seven women and five men sat unmoved as the verdict was read and as Smith’s sobs were joined by the cries of his family and the family of his young victim, Paul Bailly.

After the verdict was read, jurors slipped out through a side door.

Reached by phone, juror John Fiecko said he was one of the seven jurors who initially favored the death penalty for Smith, while three others wanted a life sentence and two were unsure.

“If the crime against Paul Bailly did not call for the death penalty, I don’t know what crime would, considering all the aggravated evidence against Greg Smith,” Fiecko said, echoing Deputy Dist. Atty. Peter Kossoris’ closing argument.

It wasn’t until Tuesday that two of the three jurors became convinced that the death penalty was the way to go, said Fiecko, a 27-year-old retail manager from Ventura.

The last woman juror holding out for a sentence of life imprisonment without possibility of parole finally gave in, he said.

Fiecko voiced sympathy for the families of the victim and the defendant.

“Mary Bailly’s child was lost, and for Sherron Smith to lose her child to the death penalty, that was kind of emotional too,” Fiecko said.

Testimony describing the horrible nature of Smith’s crime, particularly from Dr. Chris Hatcher, a psychologist specializing in child molestation cases and an expert on sexual sadism, convinced Fiecko to favor the death penalty.

“It was kind of appalling at times what was committed on such a small boy,” he said.

Smith, he added, did not seem remorseful during the trial. Fiecko said Smith seemed like a person who would use his immaturity, his size and his childlike ways to his advantage.

Nancy McKinley, a Thousand Oaks electronics technician who also wanted a death verdict for Smith from the start, agreed.

“This man was a predator,” she said. “He stalked his victim. He did his homework very thoroughly.”

McKinley said she did not see Smith as a child, as his attorneys had argued. “He did not have the mind of an 8-year-old. What he did was far too advanced for an 8-, 10-, or 12-year-old.”

Juror Philip Pratt, 45, of Simi Valley was one of the initial holdouts.

“I didn’t roll over, I was honestly persuaded that the verdict we rendered was the correct one, but I did have to struggle,” he said. “He had a very fair trial. . . . It wasn’t easy for anyone.”

Pratt held to his position in light of Smith’s defense that he was childlike and had low- to below-normal intelligence. But that argument could not hold up under the weight of the evidence, he said.

“One of the most crucial pieces of evidence was the gas can that was seen in his room the night before that indicated he planned the whole thing in gruesome detail,” he said. “It was methodically planned.”

As Perren dismissed the jurors, Smith was led away to the Ventura County Jail, still crying and leaning on defense attorney Farley. Smith’s family stayed in the courtroom, being comforted by Farley’s co-counsel, Willard Wiksell, until a bailiff said, “Sorry, kids” and ushered them out a side door.

Outside, they covered their faces with coats and declined to comment as they walked past news photographers to their cars.

“Get that camera away from me or I’ll kill you,” Marvin Smith said as a photographer’s strobe went off. “Just stay away.”

Mary Bailly exchanged hugs with her fiance and relatives and left the courthouse without commenting on the verdict, saying, “Not right now.”

Smith pleaded guilty last October to charges of kidnaping, child molestation, murder and arson in a legal move that his attorneys hoped would give them a better chance to save him from a death sentence.

Paul Bailly’s gagged, burned body was found in a brush fire near Simi Valley on March 23, 1990, several hours after his mother dropped him off at a day-care program for latchkey children at Darby Avenue Elementary School in Northridge.

Two days later, police arrested Smith for the killing. They later learned that school officials fired Smith on March 6, 1990, after several children, including Paul, complained that he had disciplined them harshly.

Prosecutors had sought to prove that Smith killed Paul out of revenge and a penchant for sexual sadism that gave him pleasure to see the boy struggle and die.

Smith’s attorneys argued that Smith should not be condemned to die because he suffers from mild mental retardation and brain damage.

Farley said Tuesday of the death penalty, “All this killing, whether it be done on the street or done under the color of the law, it’s all wrong,” he said. “It’s a circle of violence. I’m sorry that the jury voted to give him death.”

Farley said Smith does not fully understand the verdict.

“Greg’s tears are not for Greg,” Farley said. “Greg’s tears are for his family--and people are not gonna believe this--but Greg’s tears are for the Bailly family and all the pain this has caused them.”

Wiksell said of the jury’s deliberations, “I think in this case they probably said, ‘OK, the guy’s defective, he’s the functional equivalent of a l0-year-old, but so what. That’s just not enough.’ ”

While no one has been executed in California since the 1960s, that does not rule out the possibility that Smith will be sentenced to die and the penalty carried out, said Kossoris.

“It hasn’t happened in this state, but that doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen,” he said.

“I think this was the right result,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Gregory Totten. “I think the jury did the right thing. This was a terrible crime to a child that did nothing to deserve it.”

Correspondent Caitlin Rother and Times staff writers Gary Gorman and Sherry Joe contributed to this story.