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.
