Donna Payant

Who was Donna Payant?

Donna Payant née Collins was a New York state corrections officer who was murdered while on duty at Green Haven Correctional Facility.

Donna Payant attended the corrections officers' academy in 1980, and had only worked at Greenhaven for about a month at the time of her murder. The mother of three children, her husband was also a corrections officer, though at a different facility. Her father, too, had been a corrections officer at the Clinton Prison for over 28 years.

Subsequent investigation revealed that Payant had been killed by inmate Lemuel Smith, a rapist and two-time convicted murderer. Prior to those two murder convictions, Smith had also been the only suspect in at least two other killings, but prosecutors had declined to try him due to the 50-year sentence he was already facing. They reasoned that he would never leave prison anyway, so the indictments were dismissed. For having killed Officer Payant, Smith received a third murder conviction, and was originally sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted as unconstitutional.

As of 2000, Payant was the sole female correctional officer in New York State to die in the line of duty.