commentary by Patrick H. Moore
On Saturday we run our errands and of Sunday we kick back and watch the NFL. On Monday we play Date Rape! Huh? That’s right! On Monday we play Date Rape. At lease Anita Smithey and her estranged husband Robert Cline III did, and it cost them both dearly.
This was a dysfunctional marriage that could probably have only happened in Florida (or some highly dysfunctional place). Just kidding. It could happen anywhere where people are twisted and the cloud of unknowing sets in. It certainly did for Anita and Cline III:
It seems that in February of 2010 Robert and Anita separated and began living apart. Nevertheless, they got together every Monday evening for rough ‘date rape’ consensual sex, which reportedly included Cline III threatening Anita with a knife. They apparently found these histrionics quite stimulating.
So nothing too extraordinary here. Couples do all sorts of somewhat strange things to keep the fires burning after post-romantic boredom sets in, although not usually after they’ve formally separated.
It’s a bit hard to imagine this peculiar practice continuing regular as clockwork year after year every Monday night without the stakes gradually being elevated. At first you merely threaten your “lover” with the knife. Then when that gets old you hold the knife against her throat and move it gently back and forth barely grazing the skin. Then when that gets a bit tiresome you draw a little blood and so on.
Twelve weeks into their Monday night kink, things went seriously awry and Anita wound up shooting and killing Cline III when he apparently wouldn’t leave after Anita thought the evening’s hi-jinks were over, and instead allegedly threw her down on the bed and began raping her (and according to some reports sodomizing her). Because Anita told law enforcement several different versions of what she claims transpired (these conversations were recorded and played to the jury at trial), it’s difficult if not impossible to know what really happened.
Rick Jancha
The fact that Anita couldn’t keep her story straight undoubtedly worked against her in the eyes of the jury, which deliberated for only three hours before convicting her. The fact fact that she stood to receive a $750,000 insurance settlement if Cline III left the land of the living also undoubtedly did not help her cause. (Based on Anita’s conviction, the money will reportedly go to Anita’s children.)
Although Anita did not take the witness stand during her trial, based on the wonders of video, the jurors were treated to the dubious sight of her being grilled by law enforcement on at least three occasions, a grilling that led Anita’s lawyer, Rick Jancha, to claim that she had been under severe duress during the interrogations. No matter, as the jurors watched the videos over and over again, it appears to have become progressively clearer that Anita was not capable of clearly explaining 1) what had transpired; and 2) sticking to her story.
David Bodden and John W. Davis of MyNews13 write:
What started as a love affair in 2007 ended in violence in 2010. The couple married but wedding bliss would soon wear off and the couple separated. Despite living in separate homes they continued to meet on Monday’s to have sex. It was during one of those visits in May of 2010 when Smithey claimed Cline became violent and raped her. She admittedly shot Cline, killing him.
Later at the Oviedo police department…Smithey claimed just before the shooting she and Cline were fighting over a knife that he was using during a date rape role play scenario.
At one point Anita told police that Cline III stabbed her during the scuffle. But then she quickly changed her story:
“I freaked out and I picked it up and I stabbed myself,” Smithey told investigators.
Although both sides make it clear that Anita’s guilt or innocence appears to hinge on her own statements, they have very different interpretations of what her statements mean. The prosecution insisted that the various versions of what went down captured on video prove that she is lying. The defense, on the other hand, focused on a 911 call in which she is “pleading with emergency responders to hurry to help Robert Cline III as he was dying on her bedroom floor.”
The fact that Anita reportedly told a neighbor, whom she sought help from after the shooting, that Cline III had stabbed her contrasts markedly with her later admission to the police that she had stabbed herself “to make her claim of self-defense more convincing.”
There is no doubt that Anita’s defense team did their best maintaining throughout the proceedings that the cuts and abrasions on Anita’s body when she arrived at the hospital “proved that the sex could not have been consensual, according to station WESH.”
Assistant State Attorney Kelly Jo Hines appears to have delivered the best line, however:
“You’re not allowed to kill a houseguest who’s overstayed their visit.”
It’s hard to argue with that…
Anita, had had been out in bail, was remanded into custody after the verdict. She faces a term of 25 years to life behind bars.
Anita’s family is trying to make the best of the disaster that has enveloped their family. David Bodden and John W. Davis write:
“We’re just very distraught at this moment but grandma’s always taught us to have faith in God and that God has a reason for everything,” said Smithey’s Cousin Monica Andry.
With perhaps a bit more logic, Andry also stated: “We have faith in Anita and we still stand behind her. We all know what happened, what the jury heard and what happened is two different things and there’s just no winners in this at all,” Andry said
But as she struggled to make sense of this tragedy, Ms. Andry did make the important point, albeit a bit clumsily, that what this case is really about is domestic violence and that whenever it occurs, there are never any winners:
“I do feel the case has been oversensationalized. I don’t think it has anything to do with rough sex and things like that. It has to deal with plain domestic violence, and sometimes when you have the safest plan to get out, it just does not work. This is one case where it ended in the worst way possible.”
Is consensual date-rape rough sex a form of domestic violence? In my typically shallow fashion, I’d never really considered the possibility. But perhaps poor distraught Monica Andry makes a good point… Meanwhile, Anita Smithy is going to spend what will seem like eternity in a Florida women’s prison. And we still don’t know for sure if she killed Cline III because she feared for her life and simply because she was sick of him and believed he “needed killing”.