Smith told investigators that she believed Copney was going to buy drugs from Cosby when he met him in the basement of the Kirkland annex. But police say her conduct the day of the shooting further proves—in addition to her alleged sighting of the gun before it was fired and her alleged knowledge of the earlier robbery—that she knew the meeting would be a theft, not a transaction.

Several people, including Smith, have testified that she packed her bags before the shooting because she intended to go home to New York that evening. Yet court documents say that Smith had made plans via text message to meet a friend in the Dunster House dining hall for dinner that night. Prosecutors contend that Smith must not have had plans to depart Cambridge until she learned that her boyfriend and his associates were about to carry out an armed robbery.

TWO VERSIONS OF A ROMANCE

In a string of documents, the defense and the prosecution offer competing narratives of the events leading up to and following the shooting in the Kirkland annex. The depiction of Smith and Copney’s relationship in the two sides’ versions of events is strikingly different.

While prosecutors argue that Smith had a serious and ongoing relationship with Copney, which could provide a motive to lie in his defense, the defense aims to show that they did not have a strong attachment.

The state’s memorandum cites evidence from Smith’s “numerous” calls and visits to Copney in prison, all of which were recorded with the knowledge of both parties.

In these conversations, prosecutors write, “[Smith] indicates her hope that she is pregnant with [Copney’s] child. They agree that they will try to find a way to be married, and she describes research she has performed so that she can marry him in prison.”

The memorandum states, “The Commonwealth views these calls as reflecting an ongoing relationship of sufficient intensity that Smith is willing to lie to obstruct justice.”

Reading the motion filed by Smith’s attorney John T. Osler, one finds a very different view of Smith and Copney’s romance.

In Osler’s summary, he writes, “Smith and Copney had a strained relationship.”

Osler writes that Campbell recalled Smith being displeased that Copney was “taking her money and spending it all on marijuana.”

The defense’s motion claims that Copney once had sex with Campbell and refers to several instances in which Copney spoke disparagingly of Smith.

According to an account provided to investigators by one of the Yale students from whom Copney stole drugs, “Copney spoke of Smith and told the men that she was not really his girlfriend but just someone he was having sex with and that he had ‘more on the side or something.’”

Jiggetts—one of the alleged accomplices—described the relationship in more blunt terms, saying that Copney had called Smith his “meal ticket.”

NULL AND VOID?