On May 19, 2025, the sentence of Richard Tandy Smith was upheld. Smith was convicted in 1987 for the 1986 murder of John Cederlund in Canadian County. Smith was originally sentenced to Death, but in 2010 Smith requested and received clemency from Governor Brad Henry. As a result of Governor Henry’s action, Smith’s sentence was commuted to Life Without Parole.
In 2024, Smith sought relief under the Oklahoma Survivors’ Act which became law in August of 2024. In his pleadings and statements to the Court, Smith indicated that he suffered abuse as a child at the hands of his father, step-father, and mother years before he shot Mr. Cederlund in the heart with a sawed-off shotgun. Smith argued that the Survivors’ Act was meant to apply to him because he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of his childhood abuse. On Monday, Smith did acknowledge that he had no domestic relationship with Mr. Cederlund and that Cederlund never abused him in any way.
Before murdering Cederlund, Smith had been convicted of two (2) other assaults involving firearms. In 1982, Smith assaulted an unarmed man by shooting him in the knee and striking him repeatedly in the head with the butt end of a shotgun. In 1984, shortly after having been released for the 1982 assault, Smith was involved in a road rage incident which began on Interstate 40 near May Avenue and continued all the way to Interstate 35 and Northeast 36th Street in Oklahoma City. Smith repeatedly rammed the other vehicle involved in the incident and ultimately shot at the vehicle with a shotgun. Smith’s twenty-one month shotgun crime spree culminated in the 1986 murder of Cederlund.
Canadian County District Judge Paul Hesse denied Smith’s Petition for Relief. He cited the fact that Smith was originally sentenced to Death, that his current sentence was ordered by the executive branch, and that there was no evidence presented that Cederlund had perpetrated a crime against Smith as reasons he felt Smith was not eligible for relief under the Survivors’ Act.
“The Survivors’ Act was not meant to be used as a weapon by serial violent offenders like Richard Tandy Smith,” explained District Attorney Tommy Humphries. “My office recognizes that there are victims of domestic violence who sometimes do retaliate against their abusers. Of course, the abuse that led to their victimization should be considered as mitigation when analyzing how a case should be resolved. Unfortunately, our office has seen several violent offenders who are seeking to take advantage of this new law in ways that no supporter of the law would sanction.”
At the conclusion of Monday’s hearing, Smith was returned to the custody of the Department of Corrections to serve out the remainder of his Life Without Parole sentence.
