Wife testifies at 2nd trial for former FCI Dublin officer 'Dirty Dick'

OAKLAND, Calif. - The wife of a former FCI Dublin correctional officer nicknamed "Dirty Dick" took the stand Wednesday in an Oakland courtroom during the second trial against her husband, who has been charged with 14 counts of sexual abuse when he worked at the now-closed women's prison.

Only wife to testify

Carla Sisi Smith is the only wife to testify for any of the 10 FCI Dublin correctional officers charged with sex crimes – the most of any Bureau of Prison in the country. 

All but her husband, Darrell Smith, have already been found guilty. A jury in March deadlocked on his guilt and his retrial began on Sept. 2. She did not testify during his first trial. 

Darrell Smith has maintained his innocence throughout, and his defense attorneys have painted Smith as a target of a "powerful group" of incarcerated women at the prison who didn't like him. Prosecutors charge that he abused four women from 2019 to 2021. 

Sisi Smith was the last defense witness to testify. Closing arguments will begin Thursday morning and the jury is expected to begin deliberating on Thursday afternoon. 

Wife's testimony brief, limited

Sisi Smith's testimony was brief – roughly an hour – and was very limited in scope. She did not testify about any alleged sexual crimes her husband is accused of committing, why she is still with him, or anything that was sexual in nature. 

Shortly before she testified, U.S. District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers decided not to allow prosecutors to allow into evidence an 8-minute video of Sissi Smith being filmed by her husband – apparently against her will – while she was cooking naked in their Florida kitchen, ruling it was irrelevant to the case.

Instead, Sisi Smith answered questions about her time working at FCI Dublin herself, how she met her husband, her financial situation and her move to Florida to take care of her mother. 

Couple owned 13 properties

Sisi Smith revealed that she and Darrell Smith, whom she referred to as her "partner of 30 years" and father of their two children, owned 13 properties at one point and sold them around the time when he was charged with the sex crimes in 2023, but said the eventual sales of those properties had nothing to do with that. 

The judge later admonished Darrell Smith for claiming that he owned "zero" properties on his forms seeking financial help to pay for his defense attorneys, Joanna Sheridan and Naomi Chung, and she said she would hold an evidentiary hearing on that since taxpayers are footing the bill for his defense. 

In April 2024, Chung tried to withdraw from being Smith's attorney, saying his financial situation had changed, but was denied that request and instead, was ordered to represent him through a court-mandated fee schedule. 

During her testimony, Sisi Smith also talked about what it was like living in Dublin, where she and her family lived in mobile housing on the prison property, as she had been a cook supervisor at FCI Dublin since 2013. And she talked about her decision to move to Florida in 2018, where she is now a culinary arts supervisor at FCI Tallahassee. She said she moved to Florida from California because her mother was diagnosed with cancer. 

At the time, Darrell Smith stayed back in Dublin with their daughters, she testified, because they "didn't want to uproot the kids."

Some court observers said it appeared as though Darrell Smith's attorneys were trying to show that Smith wasn't running away to Florida and selling properties after he was charged, but did so because of life circumstances. 

Smith rides bulls, got demoted, is claustrophobic

To introduce Sisi Smith to the jury, defense attorneys also had her talk about how she met Darrell Smith, who wore a cowboy hat and a polo shirt at one of their first meetings, which she thought was funny "because they didn't match." She also said her husband rode bulls in Florida. The subject of him wearing a cowboy outfit as a Bureau of Prison employee has been a subject at both trials. 

Sisi Smith and Darrell Smith first worked at FCI Mendota, a men's prison in California, together from 2011 to 2013, and then at FCI Dublin, an all-women's prison, which was closed in 2024 because of the sex abuse scandal. 

When Darrell Smith was demoted in 2017 and put on a Performance Improvement Plan at work, Sisi Smith said their financial troubles began to mount, and she said Darrell Smith worked morning shifts and Sunday mornings to try to make up his pay loss. He went from about $75,000 a year to $70,000, she said. 

Eventually, the daughters moved to be with their mother, and Darrell Smith would drive to Florida to visit them, because he is claustrophobic and doesn't fly, Sisi Smith testified. Sometimes, she flew to visit him. 

FCI Dublin a ‘chaotic’ place

In 2019, Darrell Smith applied to work in Florida so that he could be with his family. 

She described the next couple of years – her sick mom, her husband away – as pretty "horrible." 

She later said that FCI Dublin was a pretty chaotic place with "all these articles" coming out, about the high-profile sex abuse scandal that eventually became the subject of Congressional hearings. 

In 2021, Darrell Smith fell down some stairs at FCI Dublin and went on workers' compensation until 2023, Sisi Smith testified. 

Prosecutors first charged Darrell Smith with sex charges in May 2023, and then amended the charges in July 2024. 

By then, Darrell Smith had moved to Florida, too, which is where FBI agents first arrested him. 

While cross-examining Sisi Smith, prosecutors indicated that her husband had filed for worker's comp claims nine times, to which Sisi Smith said that sometimes people fill out the claim forms to document an injury but don't actually get paid through the claim. 

At one point near the end of her testimony, Sisi Smith insisted that the move to Florida and the sale of their properties had nothing to do with her husband's "conviction.

She then swiftly realized her slip of the tongue, and corrected herself to "charges."

She told the defense attorney that she was nervous.

"I've never been in this setting before," she said. 

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