Donna Payant nee Collins
(Mar 22, 1950-May 15, 1981) was a New York state corrections officer who was murdered
while on duty at Green Haven Correctional
Facility
. She was 31 years old at the time of her
death.
Donna Payant attended the corrections officers' academy in 1980,
and had only worked at Greenhaven for about a month at the time of
the incident. The mother of three children, her husband was also a
corrections officer, but he worked at a different facility. Her
father, too, had been a corrections officer at the Clinton Prison
for over 28 years.
Subsequent investigation revealed that Payant had been killed by
inmate
Lemuel Smith, a rapist and
two-time convicted murderer. Prior to those two murder convictions,
Smith had also been the only suspect in at least two other
killings, but prosecutors had declined to try him due to the
50-year sentence he was already facing. They reasoned that he would
never leave prison anyway, so the indictments were dismissed. For
having killed Officer Payant, Smith received a third murder
conviction, and was originally sentenced to die, but it was reduced
as unconstitutional.
As of 2000, Payant was the sole female correctional officer in New
York State to die in the line of duty.
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