Life Or Death Verdict Due For Mom Who Killed Kids Testimony On Death Penalty For Susan Smith Will Begin

It’s a question of life or death.

After a week of testimony, the jury found Susan Smith guilty on Saturday of murdering her two young boys. Today, the nine men and three women will begin hearing the penalty phase of her trial. Its outcome will determine whether Smith, a 23-year-old former secretary, is sent to life in prison or to death.

South Carolina has not executed a woman since the 1940s. In addition, since modern death-penalty statutes were enacted in the 1970s, only one woman has been executed in the United States. That was Velma Barfield, executed by lethal injection in Raleigh, N.C., in 1984 for the poisoning death of her lover.

In South Carolina, the condemned are given a choice between the electric chair and lethal injection.

The decision to send Smith to her death must be unanimous. If the jury cannot reach a unanimous decision, the judge will sentence her to life in prison. She would be eligible for parole in the year 2024.

David Bruck, a noted death-penalty defense attorney who is defending Smith, told reporters that Smith was not surprised by the verdict.

Smith told authorities in October that her children, Michael, 3, and Alex, 1, had been abducted by a black man who entered her car at gunpoint, then made her get out on a rural highway.

Police started a nationwide hunt for the boys as Smith made impassioned pleas on national television for their return. Nine days later, she confessed that she had rolled her car into muddy John D. Long Lake outside of town with the boys still inside, strapped into their car seats.

The penalty phase, which is expected to last approximately a week, is expected to contain more testimony about Smith’s confused childhood and sordid sex life.