“How many black men have been detained, beaten, arrested, charged with this crime based on her word alone?” The truth eventually emerged. The mother was arrested. Now you want to be free
Inside Susan Smith’s car, pulled from the bottom of a lake in South Carolina, USA, in 1994, were the bodies of her two children. They were still strapped to the car seats, along with Susan Smith’s own wedding dress and a photo album.
Everything that symbolized Smith’s life was in that car, investigators say, except her husband, who stood by her side in the national spotlight for nine days as she lied and described a fictional car thief while begging for his return. of their children – Michael, aged 3, and Alex, aged 14 months -, who were already dead.
More than 30 years later, an emotional Smith, now 53 and eligible for parole, was heard again pleading, this time to be released from prison. Parole was unanimously denied by the commission after her ex-husband, David Smith, and 14 other witnesses gave emotional statements against Susan Smith’s release, making her chances of parole virtually impossible, according to experts interviewed by the CNN.
The case triggered a media storm and a days-long hunt for the suspect after Smith, then 23, told police in November 1994 that her children had been taken when she was robbed by a black man in the city. from Union, South Carolina, in late October. The false accusation gained traction as people across the country sought out the boys, organizing vigils, hanging flyers and calling police with information.
“When the car is pulled out and in those two seats are two precious little boys who have been in the water for nine days… I saw men and women in law enforcement crying,” says Tommy Pope, the lead prosecutor on the case, who was present when the car was pulled from Lake John D. Long.
“The betrayal was worse than if there had been a car thief and that’s what made the case resonate over the decades – people were so drawn to help and drawn to Susan,” Pope tells CNN.
The loss of Michael and Alex and the betrayal felt so deeply by all those who clung to every hope that the boys would be found – investigators and family – still reverberates in the community. Smith’s generic description of a black man as a suspect fits into the racist phenomenon of white women falsely accusing black men of being criminals — something that has affected society for decades, points out Gloria Browne-Marshall, a civil rights attorney and law professor. at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
“How many black men have been detained, beaten, arrested, accused of this crime based on her word alone?” laments Browne-Marshall.
Investigators were skeptical of Smith’s story from the beginning, and eventually, under interrogation, she confessed to driving her car into the lake, killing her children.
At her 1995 murder trial, which was closely followed around the world, the prosecution pointed to reports that Smith was having an affair with her boss’s rich son – and the man she was involved with had just broken up. the relationship because I didn’t want to have children. Smith’s lawyers argued that she was suicidal and depressed and that she intended to stay in the car with her children, claiming it was a failed murder-suicide.
That argument didn’t hold up, Pope recalls, because police tested the car to determine whether Smith had a chance to change his mind or save his children after driving the car into the lake. Investigators determined that the car floated for about six minutes before sinking below the water’s surface and to the bottom of the lake with her children inside.
“This was not a tragic mistake,” David Smith said at a court hearing this year — it’s recent, it was November 20th. “She purposely wanted to end her children’s lives. I never felt any remorse from her. She never expressed any to me.”
“I know what I did was horrible”
Pope, a former prosecutor in the 16th Judicial Circuit who worked for years on the police force before becoming a prosecutor, believes Smith was trying to erase all traces of the life he led,
In the 1990s, Smith worked at a local textile factory with a man thought to have been her lover, Pope says. But when Smith received the letter firing her from her job, he took it personally.
“Susan Smith made a horrible decision: she somehow thought that if she didn’t have children she would end up with this man,” says Pope. “She had convinced herself, based on what he wrote, that somehow, she would stay with him.
“She basically took that part of her life that she thought was holding the relationship back and put it at the bottom of that lake,” argues Pope.
Pope sought the death penalty for Smith but the jury opted for a life sentence, believing it was the most severe punishment so she could reflect on her actions.
But Pope doesn’t believe that was the case, pointing to Susan Smith’s disciplinary problems during her three decades in prison.
Smith testified on November 20: she spoke via video before a panel of the South Carolina Department of Probation and asked to be released, saying she had learned from her mistakes.
“I know what I did was horrible,” he said through tears.
At the hearing, David Smith referred to his ex-wife’s history and told the committee that 30 years is not enough time for Susan Smith to spend in prison.
“I’m not here to talk about what she did in prison… I’m just here to defend Michael and Alex’s interests as their father,” he said.
The father said he wondered if he would be able to continue living after Susan Smith murdered their children.
“She came very close to making me end my life because of the pain she caused me,” said David Smith.
Susan Smith’s attorney, Tommy A. Thomas, did not respond to CNN’s requests. He told the commission that his client was “truly sorry”.
Hundreds of people opposed Smith’s parole
Smith’s chances of getting parole were already unlikely, as studies show that the main factor influencing parole decisions is the presence of a victim or the victim’s family, explains Hayden Smith, professor of Criminology and Justice Criminal Law at the University of South Carolina.
Smith’s disciplinary history and the media attention involved also likely have a bearing on the final decision, Hayden Smith says.
But the presence of her ex-husband and 14 witnesses at the hearing — all of whom opposed parole — made her chances “almost nil,” adds Hayden Smith.
“Victims show up, they make statements — that’s the central part of it, the dynamics that happen in the room. The parole board pays a lot of attention to this,” describes Hayden Smith, who does research for the state Department of Prisons and who interviewed Susan Smith while she was incarcerated.
By the first week of November, the Office of Victim Services had received at least 360 letters, emails and messages about Susan Smith’s parole hearing. Only six asked for Susan Smith’s freedom.
Parole is granted to violent prisoners in just 8% of cases, according to the South Carolina Department of Probation and Pardon Services.
Violent offenders who are released on parole put pressure on a system that is already under-resourced, says Hayden Smith.
Hayden Smith recalls a case from 1988: Willie Horton, a convicted murderer, raped a woman and stabbed her partner while he was on parole under a Massachusetts program.
“It’s the Willie Horton rule, which is: can you give me assurances, as a parole board, that this person won’t hurt anyone?” asks Hayden Smith.
A History of Black Men Falsely Accused
Susan Smith’s case is the “quintessential mix of Southern ingredients,” says Hayden Smith — highlighting the case’s racial implications. “What was the effect of some people in the community instantly assuming that her story was correct and starting to harass and search for African Americans?”
Gloria Browne-Marshall, a civil rights lawyer and law professor, says the case reflects a more than 150-year history of white women making false accusations against black men, assuming that society “will buy into the notion of innate hostility that black people have in their DNA, which is a myth, as well as in the lust they supposedly have for white women.”
Gloria Browne-Marshall recalls the work of black journalist Ida B. Wells, who investigated lynchings in southern states, saying many involved white women making accusations against black men.
This social phenomenon, according to Gloria Browne-Marshall, is a “position of power demonstrated by white women”. “So it’s not a question of whether or not the accuser is lying, it’s a question of which black man did it. It’s a historic power play that still works today.”
Following Susan Smith’s confession, her family apologized to the black community, with her brother issuing a statement saying that “it’s really disturbing to think that this would be a racial issue,” according to a November 1994 report by the “Washington Post.” .
Tommy Pope, the lead prosecutor on the case, says he still feels haunted by the idea that an innocent black man could have ended up in jail because of the false accusation. If that had happened, Pope says he would have resigned.
“Susan’s description was so general that if she had persisted and tried to identify someone… It’s terrifying to think that she would have actually named someone,” says the prosecutor. “If that had happened, I would never have gotten over it.”
In the nine days that Susan Smith repeated her lie over and over, often sobbing and appearing emotionally distraught on camera, Pope believes an interview she gave at that time to the media revealed a likely truth.
“She talks about the moment when the car thief drives away with her children and the children cry for her. I thought, ‘Well, that part was probably true. She threw them in the lake and they were floating, screaming for their mother for six minutes,” says Pope.
“Some of the best lies are wrapped in truth.”
