State v. Mehki Joseph Smith, C-08-CR-22-000630
LA PLATA, MD—Tony Covington, State’s Attorney for Charles County, announced that on Wednesday, April 24, 2024, Charles County Circuit Court Judge Donine Carrington Martin sentenced Mehki Joseph Smith, 24, of Waldorf, to Life with all but 35 years suspended in prison for the First-Degree Murder of Michael Anthony Dodson, Sr. and the Use of a Firearm During the Commission of a Crime of Violence. In a separate case, Smith was sentenced to a concurrent 15 years in prison for Second-Degree Burglary. Upon release, Smith will be on supervised probation for five years.
On January 25, 2024, Smith entered a guilty plea to the aforementioned charges.
On October 25, 2022, officers responded to a parking lot located on Old Washington Road in Waldorf for the report of a shooting. Upon arrival, officers found the victim, Michael Anthony Dodson, Sr., suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. Unfortunately, Dodson was pronounced deceased by Emergency Medical Services due to his injuries.
During the investigation, officers located Smith walking in the area of the shooting with signs of injury to his leg. A further investigation revealed that on the evening of the incident, Smith was involved in a physical altercation with the victim’s son. When the physical altercation was done, Smith left the area but later returned with a handgun. Witnesses stated that Smith said he was going to kill the victim’s son. A witness called the victim alerting him that Smith was back. After the victim arrived, Smith shot him 25 times.
In a separate incident occurring on June 2, 2019, Smith burglarized a business that sold firearms, leaving with an AR style rifle.
During sentencing, Assistant State’s Attorney Jonathan Beattie told the judge that “these cases are about decisions.” He furthered that Smith’s “choice was to retrieve a weapon and escalate the situation while [the victim’s] choice was to de-escalate the issue. – He makes a decision to get revenge and unfortunately, he took revenge on the wrong person.”
Before sentencing Smith, the Honorable Judge Carrington Martin told him, “Twenty-five bullets; twenty-five times you had a choice.”
Sentencing
C-08-CR-22-000630
- Count 1: First-Degree Murder
- Life with all but 35 years suspended
- Count 2: Use of a Firearm During the Commission of a Crime of Violence
- 20 years concurrent to Count 1
C-08-CR-23-000342
- Count 2: Second-Degree Burglary
- 15 years
- Concurrent with sentence for C-08-CR-22-000630
- 5 years of supervised probation upon release
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