Susan Smith was brought before a South Carolina parole board on November 20 and was not allowed to go free. She killed her two toddler sons and lied to the public about how they died.
Smith showed up through Zoom from the prison where she is being held. Before she spoke, her lawyer, Tommy Thomas, defended her by saying that Smith’s murders were caused by “mental health” problems, such as postpartum depression after the birth of her younger son.
He also said that his client felt “truly sorry” for the murders she did in October 1994. Before he left, Thomas said that Smith “will never be able to forgive herself.”
Related: When Smith was asked to speak, she was moved to tears as she said she was sorry for what she had done. She calmed down and then said, “I know what I did was terrible, and I would give anything to go back and change it.” She also told them she was sorry for the time and money they wasted looking for a suspect who didn’t exist and her kids.
When Smith was asked about the many violations she admitted to while she was in prison, she said they were because she was “stupid.” She also said that while she was in jail, she “grew up” and “learned from them.”
Smith said, “That people are important, that forgiveness and love are important, that family is important, and that the choices we make don’t just affect us, they affect the people we love.” And not to accept things or people as they are.
Right after Smith and her lawyers spoke, her ex-husband David Smith and more of his family and friends, along with people from the prosecution team, spoke against her release.
The first prosecutor, Tommy Pope, spoke first and reminded everyone that the case was originally one for the death penalty.
He said that the original, made-up suspect would have probably been put to death if he had been guilty. He said that David Smith would have gotten the same punishment if he had been found guilty.
Pope also said that Susan Smith’s claim that the act was part of an attempted suicide that didn’t work was not supported by the facts. In the end, he asked the board to deny his parole.
Another member of the prosecution team, Kevin Brackett, talked about how Smith’s lies caused a “global sensation” and how “the whole country was in the grips of her lie and her treachery.”
He also said that Smith should stay in jail, saying, “I don’t think she should ever be released from jail until the last person who remembers Michael and Alex is dead.” And she won’t live to see that happen.
She should never be freed, and she shouldn’t be freed now either. He also said this about David Smith: “His hopes and dreams were dashed.” I hope you dash hers today and every two years from now on.
Rebecca Smith French, the boys’ aunt and sister of David Smith, talked about how much she looked up to Susan as a teen but had lost trust in her since the murders and had trouble making friends.
Doug Smith, David Smith’s uncle, teared up several times as he talked about how his nephew wanted to see the boys but was told not to because they had been in the water for nine days.
David Smith was the last person to speak. He said, “God let us choose.” And she chose to kill them on her own that night. It wasn’t a terrible mistake. It wasn’t something she meant not to do. She meant for their deaths to happen.
Smith drowned her three sons, Michael, 3, and Alex, 14 months, in the John D. Long Lake thirty years ago by putting them in their car seats and rolling her car into the lake.
Smith told the public, for more than a week, that a black man had stolen her car while the boys were still inside, even though she knew exactly where her children were. She begged for the safe return of her children while her husband stood by her.
After her story fell apart, Smith admitted that she had been seeing a man who didn’t want children and that she was to blame for letting them drown. She was given a life sentence after being found guilty of killing two people in 1995.
At the time of her sentencing, though, South Carolina law said she could get parole after 30 years. She can now ask for her freedom every two years by going before a parole board.
David Smith, Smith’s ex-husband and the father of Michael and Alex, was in court to fight Smith’s release. “They can’t let her out,” he told NBC’s “Today” Show. It’s not enough to have thirty years. This wasn’t a mistake. She planned to kill Michael and Alex.
He also said, “I don’t think she’ll ever be sane again.”
Smith kept making news for her behavior while she was in prison for 30 years. Tommy Pope, a former prosecutor, said that Smith gave out call lists for her ex-husband and other family members after a documentary filmmaker said he would pay her.
She was also caught with illegal drugs and having several sex relationships while she was in jail, including one with Alfred Rowe, a former prison guard. Rowe told NewsNation in August that he also didn’t think Smith should be freed because “she hasn’t really learned anything except how to break the law.”