Paige Carter-Smith out of federal prison, records show
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV) - Paige Carter-Smith, who was indicted alongside a Tallahassee city commissioner in the FBI’s probe of city politics, has been released from federal prison less than a year after her sentencing.
The Bureau of Prisons website shows Carter-Smith is out of the Marianna federal prison where she has been since Nov. 2021. She is now in a residential re-entry program based out of Orlando, the BOP website indicates.
WCTV has reached out to BOP to find out when Carter-Smith was released from the Marianna prison and where she is now, but we have not yet received a reply to our email.
Carter-Smith’s attorney, Stephen Webster, said he had no comment on the release or her whereabouts.
Carter-Smith was at one point the city’s Downtown Improvement Authority Executive Director. She was indicted on 44 counts, including racketeering, fraud, bribery and extortion, with former City Commissioner Scott Maddox in Dec. 2018. The two pleaded guilty to honest services fraud and tax fraud conspiracy in Aug. 2019.
They both testified against JT Burnette, a developer who was also indicted in the FBI probe, in a trial that was delayed numerous times throughout the coronavirus pandemic.
Carter-Smith and Maddox were sentenced to two and five years, respectively, in Sept. 2021.
Nearly 100 people have commented on this story on WCTV’s Facebook page since it was posted Wednesday, some of them calling it a “slap on the wrist” and a “waste of taxpayer money.”
The WCTV newsroom has reached out to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for comment and an estimate of the time and money they’ve spent on the corruption investigation that led to the arrests of Carter-Smith, Maddox and Burnette. A DOJ spokeswoman said “we have no comment.”
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