The Degasperis-Procesi equation is an approximating model of shallow-water wave propagating mainly in one direction to the Euler equations. Such a model equation is analogous to the Camassa-Holm approximation of the two-dimensional incompressible and irrotational Euler equations with the same asymptotic accuracy, and is integrable with the bi-Hamiltonian structure. In the present study, we establish existence and spectral stability results of localized smooth solitons to the Degasperis-Procesi equation on the real line. The stability proof relies essentially on refined spectral analysis of the linear operator corresponding to the second-order variational derivative of the Hamiltonian of the Degasperis-Procesi equation.