Susan Smith
...ollected, Wells would “begin to sort out fact from fiction” (“The Big Lie”). Besides Wells, the investigation also included Union County Sheriff Deputies members of the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, Forensic Scientists, FBI agents, and psychologists from the FBI’s Behavioral Sciences unit. They all played a part in the investigation and getting Susan Smith to admit to her crime. To society, and to Union County, this case severely effected the African-American population. Many newspaper editorials condemned those who were quick to believe blacks were responsible for the carjacking. The town’s black ministers preached messages of healing, rather than division. The town held a meeting to pledge their desire for unity in the face of this tragedy. More than a hundred blacks and whites attended, hoping to find comfort, as well as sending a message to the nation that Union was not bitterly divided along racial lines. During the investigation, only a few black men had been questioned, and both had been treated courteously and released after a short time (“The Investigation”). For this type of criminal activity investigators must carry out meticulously planned interrogations that would gradually break down the defenses of the suspect. In this case, they used the “good cop/bad cop” routine. The investigators believed that if they could gain Susan’s trust, that they could convince her to confess. But, they were also careful to not push too hard, because of her previous suicide attempts. Investigators would interview Smith daily and routinely give her polygraph tests. Smith continually failed the question: “Do you know where your children are?” The investigation compiled a psychological profile of Smith, and established motive from speaking to a co-worker that Susan was having an affair with, Tom Findlay. He was rich and liked her, but wanted nothing to do with her children. The police believe her motive was that “greed and ambition had pushed Susan to rid herself of her children by murdering them” (“The Investigation”). Another of the investigators tactics was to build up the media frenzy directed to David and Susan Smith. The investigators held press conferences, talked to the Today Show, Larry King Live, contacted America’s Most Wanted, obtained help from the South Carolina chapter of the Adam Walsh Center, and also had the help of Marc Klaas, the father of Polly Klass, the twelve year old girl from California who was kidnapped from her bedroom and murdered in 1993. The Smith’s didn’t want anything to do with these public out cries, refusing to speak to the press. The only time they spoke to the press was the infamous quote from Susan: “To whoever has our boys, we ask that you please don’t hurt them and bring them back. We love them very much…I plead to the guy please return our children to us safe and unharmed. Everywhere I look, I see their play toys and pictures. They are both wonderful children. I don’t know how else to put it. And I can’t imagine life without them”. She looked into the camera and lied to a nation who wanted to help. Part II Susan Smith was arrested on two counts of murder. Susan Smith appeared in a Union, South Carolina court in January, where her lawyer, David Bruck, said Smith would not enter a plea in the case. A plea of not guilty was then entered on her behalf. Smith’s parents hired David Bruck, a Columbia, South Carolina attorney specializing in death penalty cases. They had to mortgage their home in order to pay for Bruck’s services. Bruck then hired Judith Clarke, an attorney who is an expert in death penalty cases, to assist him with the trial. The prosecution, led by Thomas Pope, announced it would seek the death penalty for Smith. Thomas Pope, at the time of the trial, was 32, and was the youngest prosecutor in the state of South Carolina (“The Trial”). The two circumstances that made Susan Smith eligible for the death penalty were the fact that she murdered two people during one act and that the murders were committed against children under the age of eleven. As her trial began in July, the facts of the crime were never in doubt, but the prosecution and the defense presented vastly different images of Smith to the jury. The judge for the case, Judge William Howard, issued a gag order prohibiting the prosecutors, defense attorneys and investigators from releasing any prejudicial information that had not been presented to the court. Prior to the beginning of the trial, Judge Howard ruled in favor of a defense motion to ban television cameras from the courtroom during the trial. Judge Howard based his ruling on what he considered to be the circus like atmosphere that television cameras had created in the O.J. Simpson trial that was ongoing in Los Angeles as well as the pre-trial publicly the case had received. Judge Howard also wanted to keep a tight rein on the length of the trial as well as the conduct of the trial participants. Prosecutors tried to present Smith as a cold-blooded killer. They described her as a woman who drowned her children to win the affections of a man she was having an affair with. That man, Tom Findlay, took the stand and read a letter he had written to Smith breaking off their relationship. Findlay wrote, “But like I told you before, there are some things about you that aren’t suited to me, and yes, I am speaking about your children” (“The Trial). The defense painted a picture of a deeply disturbed and depressed young woman who had suffered from sexual molestation at the hands of her stepfather. The defense’s strategy was to outline Susan’s emotional troubles that caused her to drown her two sons. The defense attorneys believed that by portraying Susan as a person with emotional problems, they could save her from the electric chair. Susan’s defense attorneys did not claim she was insane or that a mental illness caused her to murder her sons. The defense decided that their only option was to plead that Smith was suffering from severe mental depression and that the murders were a failed suicide, in which Smith planned to drown herself as well as her sons (“The Trial”). After five days of testimony, and with Smith’s confession almost assuring a guilty verdict, the jury received the case. It took the nine man, three woman panel only two and a half hours to reach a verdict. Susan Smith was guilty of two counts of murder. Next came the sentencing phase of the trial, with the jury to decide whether Smith deserved the death penalty for her crime. As testimony began again, the prosecutors called David Smith to the stand. He had stood by his estranged wife for nine days in October 1994, pleading for the release of his two sons after she told the world they had been kidnapped. But in his testimony, he called for his former wife to be put to death for her crimes. He cried and told the jury that all of his hopes, dreams, and everything he had planned on for the rest of his life had ended that day. Prosecutors showed the jury a re-enactment of Susan Smith’s car sinking into the lake. A camera was mounted on the back seat so jurors could get a picture of what the boys saw for the last six minutes of their lives as the car went down in the water. When the defense began its case in the sentencing phase of the trial, it again focused on Smith’s troubled past. Jurors heard of the divorce of her parents when she was six and her father’s suicide a month later, as well as Smith’s own suicide attempts and sexual molestation by her stepfather, that later had turned into an affair. The defense put Russell on the stand, saying that he deserved some o the blame in the case. He sent Smith a letter in prison saying, “you don’t have all the guilt in this tragedy”, saying that he let her down as a father (“The Trial”). When the jurors were given the case, they again took little time to reach a verdict. Susan Smith was sentenced to life in prison. Under South Carolina law, Smith will be eligible for parole in 30 years, although the nature of her crime makes it unlikely that she will ever be released (Smith 140). When jurors were asked about their decision, they acknowledged that they knew of Sheriff Wells’ comments after Susan’s arrest. Wells had said th...