Serial rapist gets long prison term, curses at judge
A Redford Township man who pleaded guilty to a string of sexual assaults and home invasions was sentenced Thursday to 55-80 years in prison.
Ikeie Ranordo Smith, 33, cursed at Judge Dalton A. Roberson after he pronounced the sentence in Wayne County Circuit Court.
Smith asked Roberson if he could comment before he was being led out of the courtroom by deputies and when the judge denied his request, Smith told him, “F--- you, your honor.”
Roberson said Smith “is a predator, there’s no question about it. ... He’s a danger to women.”
Assistant Wayne County Prosecutor Danielle Bennetts said, “I don’t think the community will ever be safe with Ikeie Smith on the streets. I think (Smith) is pathological. He’s serial. I don’t think he knows how to stop.”
Bennetts added: “Ikeie Smith spent five years being a homeowner’s worst nightmare. ... He spent five years being a woman’s worst nightmare. Waking up to a man standing over you while you’re in your bed or on your couch and your babies are in another room. That is a woman’s worst nightmare.”
In court Thursday, Bennetts presented audio tapes of Smith’s statements to Dearborn Police recorded in December.
During those conversations, Smith said he advised some of his victims, “Keep your doors locked. Keep your windows locked. You have to protect yourself. You never have to worry about me coming back in.”
Smith said he also told victims, “I’m leaving but I’ll be waiting outside to see if you call anybody.”
In another audio tape, Smith tells Dearborn Police detectives about his crimes. He told them he had committed about 50 crimes and that “I knew I was ... wrong. I knew I was wrong. Somehow, man, you cannot always control your urges even when you know it’s wrong, like a ... crackhead.”
During a taped conversation, Smith is heard talking to a friend during a jailhouse phone call referring to his victims in offensive terms: “I’m hoping some of these b------ are so traumatized they don’t even show up.”
Before Smith received his punishment, several of his victims spoke to the judge, giving emotional statements about his crimes against them. Their names were not given.
A Dearborn man asked the judge to give Smith the maximum sentenced behind bars for breaking into his family’s home in August 2015 and disrupting their sense of “comfort (and) safe haven.”
A victim in one of the Redford Township crimes that Smith pleaded guilty to told the judge: “I hope he serves a very long ... and horrible life in prison.” The woman told Roberson she hopes Smith has to endure what he did to his victims.
“I want him to go through the fear we went through,” said the woman who was attacked in her home in Redford.
A woman who was victimized in Garden City in 2015 told Smith, “You have changed my life greatly.”
Another victim in Redford Township said Smith’s attack on her in November 2014 caused both physical and mental problems. She said she found it hard to sleep in her home and that “I couldn’t look at a man without having a panic attack and wondering if that was the man who attacked.”
Smith’s co-counsel, defense attorney Wyatt Harris, said Smith did the “very responsible thing” and accepted accountability for his crimes by taking a plea. He asked the judge to give his client 30-40 years.
Harris said Smith had a problematic childhood.
The sentence Roberson handed down exceeded the guidelines by about 21 years, according to a news release from the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office.
Smith pleaded guilty May 1 to charges in nine cases during a trial before Roberson.
There was no plea deal and no sentence agreement, according to the prosecutor’s office.
Smith faced multiple charges of home invasion, criminal sexual conduct and other crimes dating to 2011 in Dearborn, Dearborn Heights, Allen Park, Inkster, Garden City and Redford Township.
Smith was accused of crimes that included breaking into an Inkster home the morning of Aug. 23, 2011, and hitting a woman in the face several times before leaving, officials said.
Smith was arrested Sept. 7, 2016, following an investigation by a number of local police departments, Michigan State Police, the FBI and the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office. He was believed to be involved in as many as 35 cases of home invasion or sexual assault in Metro Detroit.
During a preliminary hearing in October, a Dearborn Heights woman testified that a man police identified as Smith broke into her home about 4 a.m. Dec. 9, 2013, got on top of her and forced her to touch his genitals.
The woman said she begged the man not to further assault her, telling him she had been raped before and couldn’t go through it again. She prayed and told the intruder he could make better choices, and he left, the woman testified.
But the woman said in her victim impact statement, which was read by Bennetts, that she lied about being raped to “outwit” Smith and to throw him off his “game.”
That woman, who was attacked by Smith in her Dearborn Heights home, called him a “scumbag” for preying on a woman with a disabled child.
In February, Smith turned down a plea offer that would have allowed most charges against him to be dismissed in return for his pleading guilty to first-degree criminal sexual conduct.
Smith will have to register as a sex offender and be on that list the rest of his life if he is paroled.
Roberson denied Smith’s last-minute motion Thursday to withdraw his plea.
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