Susan Smith will ask a parole board in South Carolina for her freedom for the first time on Wednesday
— Susan Smith, the South Carolina mother convicted of killing her two sons by rolling her car into a lake in 1994 with the boys strapped in their seats inside, will ask a parole board for her freedom on Wednesday.
Smith, 53, is serving a life sentence after a jury convicted her of murder but decided not to sentence her to death. Under state law at the time, she is eligible for a parole hearing every two years now that she has spent 30 years behind bars.
Smith will make her case for freedom to the seven-member parole board by video link from prison. Then she will go offline and her ex-husband and father of the children, as well as the prosecutor at her murder trial, will argue that she remain incarcerated.
Smith killed 3-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alex because a man she was having an affair with suggested the boys were the reason they didn’t have a future together, prosecutors said.
A decision to grant parole requires a two-thirds vote of board members present at the hearing, according to the state Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services. Parole in South Carolina is granted only about 8% of the time and is less likely with an inmate’s first appearance before the board, in notorious cases or when prosecutors and the families of victims are opposed.
Smith made international headlines in October 1994 when she said she was carjacked late at night near the city of Union and that a man drove away with her sons inside.
