Columbia, S.C. Susan Smith was denied parole on Wednesday. She horrified the country thirty years ago when she pulled her car into a lake while her two young sons were inside and watched them drown.
Through a video hookup, Smith, 53, begged to be released from prison. She had to persuade the seven-member panel that she was prepared to return to society after thirty years in prison.
The panel unanimously voted nay.
Before the parole board’s decision, Smith, in tears, said that what she had done to 14-month-old Alex and 3-year-old Michael “was horrible.”
She replied, “I would give anything if I could go back and change it,” as she wiped her eyes and removed her glasses. “I apologize. I am aware that is insufficient. Even though they are only words, they are from the bottom of my heart.
Smith said that she hasn’t always been an example of a model inmate. However, she said, “I am a Christian and I know that God has forgiven me.” her words.
David Smith, Smith’s ex-husband and the father of the boys, encouraged the board to reject her parole plea when it was his turn to speak. He was accompanied by some members of the legal team who prosecuted Smith as well as still-stricken family members. Everyone wore pins with pictures of the two young boys on them.
David Smith remarked, “It’s been a tough 30 years,” emphasizing that he was there to speak up for their deceased boys. “This wasn’t a tragic mistake … She purposely meant to end their life.”
“Just not enough,” he added, is the amount of time Smith has already served.
“So I am asking that you please deny her parole today,” states David Smith.
Nearly 30 years had passed since Smith made a false allegation that she had been carjacked late at night in Union, South Carolina, by a Black man who took off with Michael and Alex in the car. This was the day she made her move for freedom.
She and her then-estranged husband, David Smith, begged for the boys’ safe return on national television during the nine-day manhunt that followed her fraudulent accusations, which received enormous media attention.
“As a mother, it s only a natural instinct to protect your children from any harm, and the hardest part of this whole ordeal is not knowing if your children are getting what they need to survive and it hurts,” Smith told NBC s TODAY show.
But Smith admitted to killing her sons a few hours after the interview on Nov. 3, 1994.
Prosecutors said during Smith’s trial the following year that she killed them because the wealthy guy she was seeing suggested they couldn’t be together because he didn’t want children.
Her lawyers contended that when she killed her sons, she was having a mental breakdown and had been sexually assaulted by her stepfather.
Despite prosecutors’ calls for the death penalty, Smith was convicted guilty of murder and given a life sentence with the possibility of release after 30 years.
David Smith stated at a press conference following the hearing on Wednesday that he will be present to oppose his ex-wife’s parole request when it comes up again in two years.
“At least I know that, for now, she’ll be behind bars,” he replied.
Smith insisted that she was a good mother from her jail cell.
She wrote: Something went extremely wrong that night in a letter to South Carolina’s State newspaper in 2015. I wasn’t myself. I loved my boys and I was a decent mother. Since it wasn’t even a planned event, there was no motivation. I am not the monster society believes me to be, and I was not in my right mind.
Additionally, Smith has a troubled prison record that includes numerous disciplinary measures.
In 1997, she committed her first transgression when she was found in possession of a razor, which was illegal.
After two prison guards admitted to having sex with Smith in 2000, she was transferred from the Women’s Correctional Center.
Smith was confined to her cell for forty-five days the next year after breaking the rules by failing to stand for count. According to the South Carolina Department of Corrections, she was punished for using narcotics, including marijuana, in 2010 and 2015 by being placed in disciplinary detention and losing her canteen privileges.
Tommy A. Thomas, Smith’s lawyer, claimed that Smith should be granted parole because she was a transformed woman who overcome the stigma associated with mental health issues to seek treatment for her depression and survived multiple suicide attempts while inside.
Although Thomas acknowledged that Smith’s murder was horrifying, he claimed that her father’s suicide when she was six years old caused a severe case of despair that eventually led to disaster. After that, he read a section that Smith had written outlining her motivations for killing her sons.
According to Thomas, Smith wrote, “I knew Jesus would take better care of them than I could.”
Thomas went on to say that although Smith is deserving of release, she will never be able to forgive herself.
The Republican speaker pro tem of the South Carolina House, Tommy Pope, who brought Smith’s case, vehemently disagreed. He claimed that Susan is always thinking about herself.
Corky Siemaszko reported from New York City, and Juliette Arcodia reported from Columbia.
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