Vancouver man found guilty of trying to kill his wife

A Clark County judge found a clean energy entrepreneur guilty Wednesday of second-degree attempted murder and second-degree assault of his wife during a drunken argument last year inside their home on the Columbia River in Vancouver.

John Garrett Smith, 46, who goes by his middle name of Garrett, was acquitted of first-degree attempted murder and first-degree assault. He is tentatively scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 22.

The case first appeared to be a severe domestic assault in which Smith repeatedly punched his wife, Sheryl Smith, in the face and grabbed her by the neck on June 2. 2013. However, the discovery of an audio recording on Garrett Smith’s cellphone of the attack prompted Deputy Prosecutor Jennifer Nugent to charge him with attempted murder. In the recording, Smith says, “I will kill you.”

“Based on the information I received … I am convinced at some point, Mr. Smith formed the intent to kill her,” said Superior Court Judge Robert Lewis. “After he formed that intent, he continued to beat and strangle her.”

He stopped strangling Sheryl Smith when she fell unconscious and appeared to have stopped breathing. He then fled the house and left his wife for dead, Nugent said.

Lewis said he was not convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that Garrett Smith planned the attempted murder, which would have been a required finding for a first-degree attempted murder conviction.

Lewis reached the verdict just before 4 p.m. after nearly three days of testimony. Garrett Smith declined to be tried in front of a jury.

Earlier in the day, he took the stand in his defense.

“In no shape or form did I try to kill my wife,” he said.

He said his words in the audio recording were taken out of context.

He said he was trying to say that “if we drink like this and we fight like this, we are going to kill each other.”

He admitted to punching his wife but denied strangling her. He said he punched her after she woke him up by pulling the back of his hair, hit him in his groin area and took his cellphone. As he was trying to retrieve his cellphone, he said, she pushed him against a railing and then hit him over the head with a brown glass bottle. At some point during the struggle, he said he fell on top of her, their heads butted, and he punched her twice. He said when he left the house, she was still conscious and yelling at him.

Psychotherapist Jeffrey Foster of the Autism Society of Washington testified Wednesday that Garrett Smith may have high-functioning autism, which could cause him to be more impulsive and reactive.

Sheryl Smith’s daughter, Skylar Williams, then 18, came home after the attack and found her mother with facial injuries. The injuries were so severe that Sheryl Smith’s eyes were swollen shut, Nugent said.

Williams later found Garrett Smith’s phone and gave it to Vancouver police officers who were at the hospital investigating the assault, court records say. Williams informed police that the phone contained a voice mail message, which may have recorded part of the assault.

During cross-examination, Nugent confronted Garrett Smith about inconsistencies in his account of the night. In the past, he has claimed that he blacked out that night and also suggested that Sheryl Smith may have caused her own injuries so that she could blame him, she noted.

Sheryl Smith suffered a broken nose, a concussion, a back injury, a badly cut lip, severe bruising and swelling and cognitive damage, including memory loss. She said she had to undergo occupational, speech and physical therapy in order to recover her speech and mobility.

Garrett Smith’s attorney, Josephine Townsend, argued that Sheryl Smith had a financial motive to exaggerate her injuries. While Garrett Smith has been incarcerated, she has been able to control his businesses and possibly profit from them, Townsend said.

At the time of the attack, Smith was preparing to roll out his patented technology for converting dairy waste into natural gas, which could have generated millions in profit, said Guy Guido Bini, general manager of Garrett Smith’s company, Stewardsmith LLC. Garrett Smith has founded multiple businesses related to the clean energy industry, including Stewardsmith and Cogentech Inc.

However, Nugent noted that after the attack, financial difficulties forced Sheryl Smith to move out of the couple’s $1.3 million home on the Columbia River and to live in a garage.