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By Jeremy Kuzmarov
On November 11, 2010, Channen Ozell Ray Smith’s life was changed forever when he was arrested and charged with the murder of Dominique Jasper.
Originally from East Texas, Smith was a good athlete who grew up in low-income housing in North Tulsa, went to McLain High School and had been studying aviation maintenance at Tulsa Tech, though he’d began selling drugs to help fund his education.
At the time of his arrest, Smith was on probation after serving time in prison and was working at C&T Tire and at One OK Field (Driller stadium) getting his life together.
Several weeks before his arrest, Smith—who was never himself in any gang—hung out in the Commanche Park apartments with a friend of his named Freddie Smith when he witnessed a fight that broke out between rival Crips gang members from Oklahoma and California.
The night after the fight, October 23, 2010, a California Crip named Arlen Young returned to the apartments and gunned down Dominique Jasper who had knocked Arlen to the ground during the fight and kicked him repeatedly.
Jasper had been a member of the Oklahoma Crips and had served prison time for shooting two California Crips.
At the time, tensions between the rival gangs was high, stoked in part by an upcoming Snoop Dog concert. Snoop Dog had made inflammatory statements insinuating that “if you’re not from California, you’re not really a gangster.”
Arlen Young confessed to crime before his death
Channen Smith told me in a recent interview that his private investigator told him that Oklahoma detectives traveled to Los Angeles to interview Snoop Dog believing that he may have had a potential connection to Jasper’s murder, though he was never charged in the case.
The car that was described by witnesses the night of the shooting was a car owned by Arlen Young’s girlfriend, Crystal Johnson.
In January 2017, Young confessed to the crime while he was dying of cancer. According to family members who he confessed to, Young knew that Smith was wrongfully convicted and wanted to clear his conscience and Smith’s name before he died.
Since Young’s confession, four people have come forward to corroborate it; the two cousins he confessed to, and two of Arlen’s friends who were in the same gang and were fighting alongside him in the altercation the night before the shooting.
Smith could not have been the shooter because he was in Claremore, 30 miles from Tulsa, when Jasper was shot, staying with his family the entire weekend without access to a car. He only got back to Tulsa 34 hours after the shooting.
Smith’s girlfriend and brother vouched for his whereabouts at his trial.
Unreliable Witnesses
Though the murder weapon was never found, Arlen had showed his cousin where he disposed of it after the shooting. There was no DNA evidence tying Smith to the crime, and the only evidence against him were unreliable witnesses who changed their testimony.
Among them was a rumored police informant named Carlameisha Jefferson, who had a personal grudge against Smith and some mental health issues, and a man that Jefferson was living with at the time named Brendan Savage.
The night of the shooting, neither Jefferson, who had been shot by Young but survived her wounds, nor Savage identified Smith as a shooter; rather they changed their testimony later on.
Shoddy Police Investigation By the Tulsa County Sheriff
Smith told me in an interview he believes the police did not do a thorough job of investigating the crime as they never interviewed Arlen Young or the California Crips that he was with on the nights of the fight and murder.
Police arrested Smith only because of the testimony of two unreliable witnesses after the fact, having made up their mind that he was the shooter before even questioning him. They failed to pursue other leads or even listen to what Smith said to them and did not try and verify his alibi.
Smith believed that the TPD may have suspected him because they wrongly thought that Freddie Smith—who was involved in the original fight—was his cousin and that he was seeking revenge on his behalf, which was entirely untrue.
The lead homicide detective in the case, Vic Regalado, is now the Tulsa County sheriff. According to Smith, Regalado told a member of the NAACP that he had crossed all his t’s and dotted all his I’s investigasting the case, which is clearly not the case.
Also the trial was unfair because a police officer who had pertinent information that could have exonerated Smith was on maternity leave, and the judge did not arrange for her to testify via skype.
Channen Smith Case Should Be Reopened
Shelley Ware is a Broken Arrow woman who heads a nonprofit that assists prisoners in their transition back to society. She’s also an advocate for Smith.
When she arranged a meeting with Tulsa District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler, she said that Kunzweiler acknowledged some of the new evidence that has come to light and said that it corroborates what the medical examiner at the time said.
Channen Smith told me that if Kunzweiler believes there is strong evidence pointing to his innocence, why doesn’t he reopen the case?
Shelley Ware told me that one main barrier that she and Smith have faced in getting the case reopened is procedural. There were certain deadlines, including in the application for post conviction relief, that were impossible to meet because the COVID pandemic made visiting the jail impossible and shut down the whole court system and because Smith in the past did not have the funds for outside counsel or means to file the necessary legal briefs.
Smith’s dream for the future
Smith said she is extremely frustrated that court officials “don’t care about guilt or innocence, only about following procedure.” She is currently raising money for his cause through GiveSendGo, a Christian fundraising website and by selling t-shirts and other merchandise.
Smith himself says that his experience with the criminal justice system and in prison has been “very humbling” to say the least, and that prison is a dangerous, depressing and at times demeaning place where people who are treated like caged animals often start acting as caged animals.
When he gets out, hopefully in the not too distant future, Channen Smith said he would like to work in prisons to mentor prisoners and help make a difference in their lives.
He sees that many of the prisoners have a lot to contribute to society and are not lost causes; they just need to be given a second chance and some programs that can help them with their transition back into civilian life.
Jeremy Kuzmarov teaches at Tulsa Community College and is Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine. He is the author of five books on U.S. foreign policy, including Obama’s Unending Wars (Clarity Press, 2019), The Russians Are Coming, Again, with John Marciano (Monthly Review Press, 2018), and Warmonger. How Clinton’s Malign Foreign Policy Launched the U.S. Trajectory From Bush II to Biden (Clarity Press, 2023).
He can be reached at: jkuzmarov2@gmail.com.
