The execution chamber at Oklahoma State Penitentiary fell silent at 9:13 p.m. Tuesday as Lois Nadean Smith, 61, was pronounced dead, ending a 19-year journey from death row to the gurney for the brutal 1982 murder of a young mother.
Smith, who earned the nickname “Mean Naden” in high school, became the third woman executed by Oklahoma in 2001, a record unmatched by any state since the death penalty was reinstated. She was the last woman on Oklahoma’s death row.
Her final words were a mixture of apology and religious devotion. “I want to say I’m sorry for the pain and loss I’ve caused you,” Smith said, turning toward the family of her victim, Cindy Bailey. “I ask that you forgive me.
You must forgive to be forgiven. To live is Christ. To die is gain.
Thank you, Jesus.”
She continued mouthing “Thank you, Jesus” as the lethal drugs flowed into her veins. The three-𝒹𝓇𝓊𝑔 protocol took just two minutes to stop her heart.
The execution came after the U. S. Supreme Court rejected her final appeals in October.
The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board had denied clemency on November 7, ruling that the murder was “especially heinous, atrocious, and cruel.”
Smith’s crime on July 4, 1982, was a nightmare of torture and cruelty. She believed 21-year-old Cindy Bailey had threatened her son Greg and reported Smith to police for 𝒹𝓇𝓊𝑔 dealing. Neither rumor was ever proven true.
That morning, Smith, her son Greg, and another woman picked up Bailey from a motel in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Bailey thought she was going to clear the air. Instead, Smith began choking her in the car.
Smith stabbed Bailey in the throat with a knife from Bailey’s own purse. When they arrived at a house in Gans, Oklahoma, Smith forced the bleeding woman inside and made her sit in a recliner.
Smith pulled out a pistol and began firing. The first shots hit Bailey in the chest. She fell to the floor, still alive, still conscious.
Greg Smith reloaded the gun for his mother while she laughed and jumped on Bailey’s neck.
Smith fired four more shots into Bailey’s chest, then stood over her head and fired two execution-style shots into the back of her skull. Nine gunshot wounds total, plus a stab wound and severe neck trauma.
Bailey left behind a three-year-old daughter, Brandy Fields, who witnessed the execution Tuesday night. “You do something of this magnitude, torturing somebody, you’re going to have to pay the price for it,” Brandy told reporters afterward.
Brandy said Smith’s apology offered little comfort. “If she really meant it, you have to forgive, even though it’s very hard and it doesn’t help me at all. It does a little bit, but it doesn’t bring back my mom.”
She added, “I wish she thought of this before she did what she did. We wouldn’t be in this position. I’m glad it’s over.
It’s been a long time.”
Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson released a statement saying, “Justice has been served. The jury determined that this murder was especially heinous, atrocious, and cruel. And the sentence they handed down has now been carried out.”
Smith’s defense attorneys argued for years that she was protecting her son, that she was under the influence of alcohol and drugs, and that her trial was flawed by a conflict of interest because her lawyer also represented Greg. The courts rejected every appeal.
Greg Smith, who reloaded the gun and watched his mother torture Bailey, was convicted of murder but sentenced to life in prison, not death. He has a parole hearing scheduled for May 2002. Brandy Fields said she will attend and fight to keep him behind bars.
In 2014, Greg was arrested in Montana on kidnapping charges in a case prosecutors said was “remarkably similar” to his mother’s crime, involving a woman and heavy intoxication.
Smith’s execution marked the 17th in Oklahoma in 2001, leading the nation that year with 18 total executions, surpassing even Texas. The next execution was scheduled for just days later.
Outside the prison, about 25 protesters held a candlelight vigil advocating against the death penalty. Eight women were arrested for crossing a police line at the Mabel Bassett Correctional Center in Oklahoma City, where Smith had been housed before transfer.
Brandy Fields, now 24, said she felt relief but acknowledged the fight is not over. “It’s not completely over because I still have to go and do that until he dies,” she said, referring to Greg’s parole hearings.
The case of Lois Nadean Smith raises questions about the death penalty, about a mother’s obsessive protection of her son, and about the disparity in sentences between Smith and her son. But for Brandy Fields, the questions are simpler.
Cindy Bailey was 21 years old. She had a three-year-old daughter. She was killed over rumors that were never proven.
She was stabbed, shot nine times, choked, and stomped on. And through it all, Lois Smith laughed.
Smith’s death took two minutes. Bailey’s death took much longer. Brandy noted that her mother’s killer “got to die more gracefully than my mother ever did.”
Lois Nadean Smith was the eighth woman executed in the United States since 1976. She was the third woman executed by Oklahoma in 2001, a record that still stands. No woman has been executed in Oklahoma since.
Her nickname “Mean Naden” followed her from high school to the grave. It was a reputation earned through violence, through aggression, through a willingness to hurt others. On July 4, 1982, that meanness reached its ultimate expression.
The execution chamber curtain closed at 9:13 p. m. The witnesses filed out.
Brandy Fields walked away, carrying the memory of her mother’s murder and the weight of a justice finally served.
Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester will prepare for the next execution, scheduled for later this week. But for one family, the chapter of Lois Nadean Smith is closed.
Cindy Bailey’s life mattered. Her daughter Brandy’s life mattered. And on December 4, 2001, the state of Oklahoma carried out the sentence that a jury handed down 19 years ago.
The drugs flowed. The heart stopped. And Lois Nadean Smith, who once laughed while crushing her victim’s throat, was gone.
