Susan Smith hearing live: Killer mom asks parole board for freedom 30 years after drowning her two sons

This is a mental health hearing,” Smith’s attorney Tommy Thomas said during her parole hearing.

“It’s about the dangers of untreated mental health. It’s about stigmas.”

He said that it’s important to Susan that people understand there’s nothing to be ashamed of to reach out for help.

Thomas is listing her accomplishments while in prison.

Susan Smith appears with her attorney Tommy Thomas.

Thomas is making a case for her release.

Two supporters are on another feed.

Smith will appear via video feed shortly.

David Smith, Susan Smith’s ex-husband and father of their children, has arrived to her parole hearing, according to NewsNation’s Brian Entin who is at the courthouse in Georgia.

David has said that he does not believe 30 years is enough time and that she should not be set free.

Susan Smith’s parole hearing will be done virtually, according to the state Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services.

Parole in South Carolina is only granted about 8 percent of the time and is less likely on an inmate’s first appearance before the board, in notorious cases, or when prosecutors and the families of victims are opposed, the Associated Press reported.

Smith falls in all of those categories.

Tommy Pope, the lead prosecutor in Smith’s trial who is now the Republican Speaker Pro Tem of the South Carolina House, said he plans to tell the parole board that when jurors rejected the death penalty, they thought a life sentence meant the rest of her life and that they did not think she could be released after 30 years.

Earlier this month, the South Carolina Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services confirmed to several news outlets that more than 127 letters have been submitted to their agency regarding Smith’s parole bid.

The letters are not publicly accessible, but a Smith family source told The New York Post that many of them are opposed to Smith’s potential release and are riddled with negative comments including one stating that Smith “belongs in that lake with her boys.”

For the last 30 years, Susan Smith has served a life sentence behind bars after a jury convicted her of murder for strapping her two young sons into the backseat of the car before putting it into a lake.

But her ex-husband, David Smith, says it’s not enough.

“30 years is just not enough,” David told the TODAY show.

“This wasn’t an accident. She deliberately killed Michael and Alex.”

Susan Smith has been behind bars for nearly 30 years after she rolled her car into a South Carolina lake, drowning her two young sons who were strapped in their car seats.

She made international headlines in October 1994 when she said she was carjacked late at night near the city of Union and that a Black man drove away with her sons inside.

The claims by Smith, who is white, played into a centuries-old racist trope of Black men being a danger to white women and stoked concerns about crime that were prevalent in 1990s America and remain so today.

For nine days, Smith made tearful pleas asking that Michael and Alex be returned safely.

The whole time, the boys were in Smith’s car at the bottom of nearby John D. Long Lake.

Andrea Cavallier reports:

Susan Smith, 53, will appear before a seven-member parole board via video feed from prison on Wednesday to plead for her freedom.

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 remains incarcerated.

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 eight percent 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.

Follow along for live updates as Susan Smith pleads for her freedom.

The South Carolina woman was convicted of killing her two children in 1994 by rolling her car into a lake with the boys still strapped inside their car seats.

A jury convicted Smith 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.

Her parole hearing is expected shortly.