LOS ANGELES (CNS) – After being found sane at the time of the crime, a transient who killed a UCLA graduate student — stabbing her 46 times inside a Hancock Park boutique furniture store — was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Shawn Laval Smith, 34, was convicted Sept. 10 of first-degree murder for the Jan. 13, 2022, killing of Brianna Kupfer, 24.
After a brief hearing Wednesday morning that included a review or reports from a pair of doctors, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mildred Escobedo determined that Smith was sane at the time of the crime, which was captured on a chilling audio recording. That determination cleared the judge to move ahead with the sentencing.
In addition to convicting him of murder, jurors in the trial also found true a special circumstance allegation of murder while lying in wait, along with an allegation that the defendant used a knife during the commission of the crime. Smith had pleaded both not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity, necessitating the sanity phase of the case, for which the defendant waived a jury trial, allowing Escobedo along to determine if he was sane at the time.
Kupfer was attacked while she was working alone inside the Croft House in the 300 block of North La Brea Avenue, near Beverly Boulevard.
In his closing argument of the trial, Deputy District Attorney Habib Balian described Smith as a man who “hates women” and went from business to business while “hunting for a woman alone” and then posed as a customer when he found Kupfer working on her own inside
“Her guard was down,” the prosecutor said of the victim. “He was lying in wait for his perfect target … She had no idea what he plans to do to her.”
On a digital audio recorder that was left behind at the scene and was still running when police arrived, the woman’s assailant can be heard saying that he was “not gonna hurt her” and ordering her to “just get down on the floor,” then the woman can be heard screaming, and her assailant subsequently tells her, “It’s over, it’s over, it’s over, it’s over, bitch.”
Smith left the young woman bleeding on the ground, left through a back door of the business and calmly walked down an alley before disappearing between two apartment buildings, Balian told jurors.
In his haste to leave the bloody crime scene, the defendant left behind a knife with a blade that was bent, as well as a knife sheath and the audio recorder — all of which contained his DNA, the prosecutor said.
In a recording that was made about 2 1/2 weeks earlier and was subsequently found on the recorder, Smith allegedly can be heard saying, “I do not like bitches,” and vowing to “destroy everything.”
Defense attorney Robert Haberer countered that the recording from December 2021 did not prove there was a motive to commit murder by the man he described as a “homeless drifter” roaming at commercial businesses to talk with people behind the counter.
Smith’s lawyer called the recording a “mildly incoherent rant laced with profanities” and “not exactly some sort of manifesto” or “smoking gun” for a “ghastly murder 2 1/2 weeks later.”
“The fact that he was upset about women is not a red flag,” Haberer told jurors about the older recording, describing it as a “tantrum to himself” in which he was “blowing off steam.”
Smith’s attorney argued that it would take a “Grand Canyon leap of logic” to conclude from the recording about 2 1/2 weeks before the slaying that the man he repeatedly referred to as “the suspect” intended then to kill someone.
“The decision to attack Brianna Kupfer happened in an instant … This was not planned in any way,” the defense lawyer said.
The woman’s body was found on the floor by a woman who came into the store with her boyfriend and then rushed outside to call 911.
Kupfer was pronounced dead in the store.
Smith — who gave police a fake name — was taken into custody six days later after a Pasadena resident called police to report a sighting of the defendant following an offer of a reward, according to the prosecutor.
The defendant has remained behind bars since his arrest.
The judge revoked Smith’s right to act as his own attorney during the trial following a contentious hearing in June 2023 in which he directed profanities at the judge during his first appearance before her and abruptly rose from his seat in the downtown Los Angeles courtroom.
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