I Just KNEW it!

Check out this little ditty from today's AJC. It just goes to show that when you get thrust into the spotlight, amazingly enough, so does all your crap. This is some of the dirt the AJC has dug up on Ms. "I'm born again, Ashley Smith"... Oh yeah, and she's from my hometown of Augusta. The shame of it.

"That record starts with a 1996 shoplifting conviction in Richmond County, when Ashley was 16. At 18, she was found guilty of two counts of possessing alcohol as a minor. At 23 she was arrested twice for speeding, once while DUI and the other with a suspended license.

Because she didn't complete earlier requirements of her misdemeanor convictions, at 24 she faced a probation violation. Later, she completed those obligations and got her driver's license back, her aunt said.

At 25, Smith was arrested and charged with assaulting her mother's ex-husband, Larry Croft. The charges were dropped, her aunt said. And Croft appeared on television Monday to vouch for his stepdaughter's character.

When Smith was 23, her husband Daniel "Mac" McFarland Smith Jr., 27, was stabbed to death outside an Augusta apartment complex on Aug. 18, 2001. Ashley Smith's family said he was killed by old friends in retaliation for his friendship with a neighbor who was an undercover drug agent.

Columbia County sheriff's Capt. Steve Morris said the death resulted from a melee of 12 to 15 people who began fighting each other with fists, bats, sticks, glass, knives and pipes. Many witnesses were gone by the time police got there.

"We have so far been unable to develop enough evidence for a prosecution," Morris said Monday. "We have one suspect that we have enough on to arrest, but not enough to prosecute."




But, like her aunt said, "Ashley is like other people who have a sordid past and found the Lord. It's not what you've done but what you do from now on."

So, do you think she and the Fulton County prosecutor are going to have the same opinion about Brian Nichols?