COLUMBIA, S.C. — Susan Smith, the South Carolina mother convicted of killing her two sons by driving her car into a lake in 1994 with the boys strapped into their seats inside, will ask a commission for her freedom Wednesday conditional releases.

Smith, 53, is serving a life sentence after a jury found her guilty of murder but decided not to sentence her to death. Under state law at the time, she was eligible for a parole hearing every two years now that she has spent 30 years behind bars.

Smith will make his case for freedom before the seven-member parole board, via video link from prison. Then she will log off and her ex-husband and father of the children, as well as the prosecutor at her murder trial, will argue that she remains incarcerated.

Smith killed Michael, 3, and Alex, 14 months, because a man she was having an affair with suggested the boys were the reason they had no future together, prosecutors said.

In an interview on NBC’s “Today” show that aired Wednesday, her ex-husband David Smith said 30 years isn’t enough and he doesn’t think she will ever be rehabilitated.

“God gives us free will and it was His choice that night – no one else’s choice. Nobody did it for her,” David Smith said. “She made the choice to murder Michael and Alex.”

A decision to grant parole requires a two-thirds vote of the board members present at the hearing, according to the state Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services. In South Carolina, parole is only granted in about 8 percent of cases and is less likely during an inmate’s first appearance before the board, in high-profile cases, or when prosecutors and victims’ families s ‘oppose.

Smith made international headlines in October 1994 when she said she was carjacked late at night near the town of Union and a black man left with her sons inside. The claims by Smith, who is white, fit into a centuries-old racist trope that black men pose a danger to white women and stoked concerns about crime that were prevalent in America in the 1990s and remain so today.

For nine days, Smith made numerous calls, sometimes in tears, demanding that Michael and Alex be brought back safely. All the while, the boys were in Smith’s car at the bottom of nearby John D. Long Lake, authorities said.

Investigators said Smith’s story didn’t add up. Car thieves usually just want a vehicle, so investigators asked why they would let Smith out but not his children. The traffic light where Smith said she stopped when her car was taken would only be red if another car was waiting to cross, and Smith said no other cars were in the area. Other elements of the story made no sense.

Smith eventually admitted to letting his car roll off a boat ramp and into the lake. A reconstruction by investigators showed it took six minutes for the Mazda to plunge below the surface, while cameras inside the vehicle showed water flowing through the air vents and rising regularly. The boys’ bodies were found upside down in their car seats, one small hand pressed against a window,

Prosecutors said Smith had an affair with the wealthy son of the owner of the company where she worked. He broke up because she had two young sons.

Smith’s lawyers said she was remorseful, suffering a nervous breakdown and intended to die alongside her children, but left the car at the last moment.

The young mother’s 1995 trial became a national sensation and a true crime touchstone, even though it was not televised by a judge worried about the impact of cameras on OJ’s murder trial Simpson which was taking place at the same time. Her lawyers worked to save her life, pointing out that Smith’s father had committed suicide and that her stepfather had sex with her with the owner of the company where she worked.

From prison, Smith is able to make phone calls and respond to text messages, many of which are from reporters and interested men. These messages and phone calls were released under South Carolina’s open records law, something Smith did not initially realize. She said the invasion of her privacy had upset her as well as the public revelation that she was juggling conversations about the future with multiple men.

Some men know why she is famous. Others are more shy. One of them told him that he was going to use the dates of his birthday and those of his deceased sons when he played the Powerball lottery. Others chatted about their lives and sports. Many promised him a home outside and a happy life.

Smith says in some messages that she still mourns her children.

“I’m really sad today and I just want to stay in bed. Today is my youngest son’s birthday, he would have been 30 today. Hard to believe,” Smith wrote in August 2023.

Smith also had sex with guards. And she violated prison policies by giving contact information for her friends, family members and ex-husband to a documentary producer who had discussed paying her for her help, according to former prosecutor Tommy Pope .

“The jury felt she got a life sentence and that’s what she should serve,” Pope said last month, shortly after the parole hearing was announced.

— The Associated Press