Jail Making it Tough For Lawyer on Murder-For-Hire Rap to Move Case

A reduction in visiting hours at the Will County jail has slowed things down for the attorneys representing a Frankfort lawyer charged with trying to put a hit on his wife.

"It's a little hard to get in there right now," attorney Steve Whitmore told Judge Daniel Rozak during a Wednesday morning hearing.

Whitmore said he needs to interview witnesses locked up in the jail in order to prepare for the defense of Robert Gold-Smith, a 50-year-old lawyer charged with asking a fellow inmate at the county jail to kill his wife. According to court papers, Gold-Smith discussed paying for the murder of his wife with at least five inmates during his time in the county jail.

Gold-Smith ended up in jail with the men he allegedly talked to about killing his wife after he was charged with brutally attacking her in a courthouse hallway in November 2010.

Gold-Smith allegedly beat his wife in front of numerous witnesses at the conclusion of a hearing for their divorce. According to a psychiatrist's report, Gold-Smith said he "blacked out" during the attack.

"I do not remember," he is quoted as saying in the report. "I was on a cloud watching everything; it seems so surreal. It seems as if I was in a dream. From the records it indicated that I hit her. I remember being tackled to the ground."

Of the five men Gold-Smith supposedly spoke to about having his wife killed, at least three met with detectives and offered to wear a wire for them.

The indictment identifies only one of these five as the target of Gold-Smith's murder-for-hire overtures. That inmate, 49-year-old Brian McDaniel of Morris, was later returned to jail on a charge of domestic battery in February. Prosecutors went on to drop the case against McDaniel on April 10.

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