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    • Susan Smith, who murdered her toddlers 30 years ago, is asking for parole today
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    Susan Smith, who murdered her toddlers 30 years ago, is asking for parole today

    Vaseline Posted on

    The South Carolina woman convicted of drowning her two young sons 30 years ago in a racially charged case that made her the object of international pity and then scorn has a chance to regain her freedom.

    Susan Smith, who drove her car into a lake with her toddlers strapped to car seats while trying to maintain an extramarital affair, is scheduled for her first parole hearing Wednesday morning.

    At a time of racial tension when the country was gripped by the OJ Simpson murder trial, and in a deeply conservative part of the Deep South, Smith initially said an armed black man had carjacked her and her sons Michael, 3, and Alex, 14 had been kidnapped. months.

    Law enforcement officers and volunteers searched for them amid intense media attention as Smith advocated for their return on national television. After nine days she confessed to killing the boys, causing shockwaves. It was later revealed that Smith, then 23, had divorced her husband and was in a romance with a wealthy man, Tom Findlay, who wanted to end the relationship because she had children.

    “It’s the ultimate betrayal,” Tommy Pope, the lead prosecutor at the time, told the Greenville News in South Carolina. “We thought maybe a bad guy or a criminal could do something so terrible. … We just don’t expect that from a mother.”

    Pope pursued the death penalty, but Smith was sentenced in July 1995 to life in prison with the possibility of parole after thirty years. She became eligible on November 4.

    Pope, now the Republican Speaker Pro Tem of the South Carolina House, said he and Smith’s former husband, David Smith, will oppose the parole.

    That reduces Susan Smith’s chances, which aren’t great to begin with. Only 7% of parole requests in South Carolina were granted in 2023, and the number has been on a downward trend for years, according to the advocacy group Prison Policy Initiative.

    David Smith told Court TV in September that he will attend the parole hearing, which will take place remotely while his ex-wife comes to work at the Leath Correctional Institute in Greenwood, South Carolina. Smith said he will address the board “to let them know that it would be an injustice if she continued to work on Mike and Alex for only 30 years.”

    Black community was ‘really on edge’

    Smith’s trial began in July 1995, six months after Simpson’s Trial of the Century and three years after parts of Los Angeles burned during riots following the acquittal of the white police officers who beat black driver Rodney King.

    “The black community was on edge. I mean, they were really tense,” reporter Gary Henderson, who covered the case for the Spartanburg Herald-Journal, recently told the newspaper. “I think they were afraid the white community would turn against them. It was a very sensitive time for that.”

    Pope acknowledged that Smith had previously faced serious hardships in her life, but said he believes her actions were motivated by a desire to maintain the relationship with Findlay, and he often thinks about what might have happened if an innocent black man had paid for her crimes.

    “If we convicted the wrong person,” Pope said, “everyone involved would have to live with themselves knowing that a man was in prison or died because of us.”

    Smith suffered early hardships, but not an exemplary prisoner

    The trial revealed the adversities Smith struggled with in her early years, from her father’s suicide when she was a young girl, to her stepfather Beverley Russel – a leader in the Christian Coalition – who began molesting her when she was 15. Smith himself attempted suicide. then once.

    But as she seeks the five votes she needs from the seven-member parole board to win her release, Smith enters with a history of being far from a model prisoner.

    She was punished twice in 2000 for having sex with prison guards and later punished for several cases of drug use and self-harm. More recently, Smith drew the ire of prison officials for violating a policy by communicating with a documentary filmmaker who allegedly paid her.

    “She is not focused on remorse for the lives she took,” Pope said. “I think she should continue to serve her sentence.”

    Contributing: Terry Benjamin II, Greenville News

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