John Eldon Smith

John Maree was paroled from prison after serving 13 years of his sentence. In 2010, at the age of 71, Rebecca Machetti was paroled 36 years into her sentence and changed her surname to Lorusso to match that of her new common-law husband at the time. In September 2020, at the age of 81, she died of complications related to COVID-19.

Smith's execution was scheduled to take place on December 15, 1983, at 8:00 a.m., which, according to a former prison guard who was staffed to work at Smith's execution, attracted many anti-death penalty protests and Atlanta-based television stations. Smith was executed by electric chair at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison in Jackson, Georgia, thereby becoming the first person to be executed in Georgia since the electrocution of Bernard Dye on October 16, 1964, which occurred prior to the death penalty moratorium established by Furman v. Georgia. The prison announced that Smith's time of death occurred at approximately 8:15 a.m.

Smith's death sentence was automatically appealed. At the time of Smith's death sentence, it was customary for an automatic appeal to be filed in every new death row inmate's case, thereby delaying the imposition of death sentences until the appeals process is finished or inmates waive their remaining appeals. In 1976, the Georgia Supreme Court upheld Smith's death sentence.

John Eldon Smith was convicted by an all-male jury on two counts of first-degree murder after a three-day trial. During the guilt phase of the trial, the jury only deliberated for 25 minutes before determining that Smith was guilty of the murders of Ronald and Juanita Akins. During the sentencing phase of Smith's trial, his jury deliberated for only 90 minutes before agreeing to sentence Smith to death. Rebecca went on trial on February 10, 1975, and received a death sentence from her jury as well. Maree agreed to testify against Smith and Rebecca in exchange for a guilty plea to two counts of first-degree murder, after which he received two concurrent life sentences that came with the possibility of parole. Maree entered his guilty plea in on April 4, 1975.

On the evening of August 31, 1974, Smith, alongside his wife Rebecca and one of Rebecca's former lovers, another former insurance salesman and a Fort Myers native named John Maree, lured 38-year-old Joseph Ronald Akins to a suburban subdivision under construction in Bibb County, Georgia, in Macon, under the guise of installing a television antenna. Juanita, who was 29 and had only been married to Akins for twenty days, accompanied him. Upon the victims' arrival, Smith and Maree ambushed them while wielding a shotgun and shot Ronald twice and Juanita once while the victims were still in the car, killing them. During the murders, Rebecca remained in Miami and did not accompany Smith and Maree to Macon. The bodies were discovered only hours later by a private pilot who happened to have been flying over the area.

After committing the murders, Smith and Maree returned to North Miami Beach. Maree was promised $1,000 for his involvement in the murder. Shortly afterwards, police suspected that Rebecca was involved in the murders. Rebecca, Smith, and Maree were all arrested in October 1974. All three were extradited to Georgia.

Smith was the first person on Georgia's death row to have an execution date scheduled following the death penalty moratorium that was established with the U.S. Supreme Court's 1972 Furman v. Georgia ruling and lifted by their 1976 Gregg v. Georgia ruling. Because of this distinction, Smith's case garnered significant amounts of press and notoriety. In October 1976, after Smith won a stay of execution, Atlanta's then-mayor, Maynard Jackson, protested the execution. At the time, Jackson was a member of a group called the Georgia Committee Against the Death Penalty, and he and other members of the group called for then-Governor George Busbee to halt all executions during his term of office. When referencing the return of the death penalty nationwide, Jackson stated, "This backward step cannot be tolerated. The death penalty historically has been applied selectively, with primarily the oppressed and the disadvantaged poor people, black and white, uneducated people bearing the brunt of this brutal, barbaric punishment." Jackson was joined by then-State Representative David Scott, the executive director of the Georgia branch of the American Civil Liberties Union Gene Guerrero, and the executive director of the Atlanta branch of the NAACP, Jondell Johnson, in calling for a 90-day stay for John Smith. No executions were carried out during Busbee's term.

In 1956, shortly after graduating from high school, Rebecca Turpin married Joseph Ronald Akins, a technician and an engineer who worked for Southern Natural Gas. They had three daughters together by 1960. In 1973, Akins accused his wife of trying to murder him, leading to their divorce by the next year. Akins remarried to Juanita Knight, an elementary schoolteacher.

John Eldon Smith (September 17, 1930 – December 15, 1983) was convicted of the murders of Ronald and Juanita Akins. He was executed by the state of Georgia via electric chair at the age of 53. He became the first person to be executed in Georgia since 1976 when the death penalty was reinstated.