ELEGY FOR LOST BOYS

By Steve Wulf

Before the jury filed in just prior to 8 p.m. on Saturday, Circuit Judge William Howard admonished the spectators and participants not to show any emotion. It seemed an impossible request, given the passion and compassion aroused by the case. Yet when June Miller, the Union County, South Carolina, clerk of court, read "guilty of murder" on the first count, the courtroom froze as if a tableau. Only Susan Smith seemed to move, shuddering at what had just been said and was about to be said again. "Guilty of murder," said the clerk on the second count.

So ended the first phase of the mercifully short trial of Smith for the drowning murders of her two sons, Michael, 3, and Alex, 14 months. But Smith must have heard the guilty verdict every one of the mornings she was driven from the Detention Center in York, where she has been incarcerated, to the courthouse in Union, where her past -- and future -- would be revealed. There on the side of Highway 49, a few miles northeast of Union, was the sign for John D. Long Lake.

On the night of last Oct. 25, Smith let her burgundy 1990 Mazda Protege slide down the boat ramp at the lake with her boys inside, strapped into their car seats. As she ran up the ramp, the 23-year-old "good mother," as her friends described her, covered her ears so as not to hear the car splash into the water, nor, perhaps, the cries of her children. She then claimed a black man had carjacked her and taken the boys with him, setting off a nationwide manhunt and a string of public appearances by Smith that ended on Nov. 3, when she at last confessed.

Two weeks ago, when the double-murder trial began, there was no dispute as to what happened that night at the lake. But the jury was given two very different portrayals of Smith. The prosecution, led by 16th Circuit solicitor Thomas Pope, 32, painted Smith as a calculating, cold-hearted woman who drowned her children to win the affections of Tom Findlay, the son of the owner of the textile plant where she worked as a secretary. In his opening statement, assistant solicitor Keith Giese said, "For nine days in the fall of 1994, Susan Smith looked this country in the eye and lied." The defense, mounted by David Bruck, wanted the jurors to see Smith as a deeply troubled woman who tried to commit suicide and momentarily forgot about her sons. "Please understand," said co-defense attorney Judy Clarke, "the victims in this case are Michael and Alex Smith. They were beautiful children. They were precious children . [but] this case goes way back, well before the night of Oct. 25, 1994."

Thanks in part to Judge Howard's no-nonsense, no-cameras approach, the proceedings moved briskly, putting the celebrated -- though admittedly more complicated -- murder trial on the other side of the country to shame. Both the prosecution and the defense took just 2-1/2 days to present their cases. There was no clear sign as to which way the jury would turn. Witnesses for both sides worked at cross purposes with the attorneys who had called them to the stand. Even the journalists covering the case were split on whether Smith was a bloodless murderer or a tragically lost soul.

The most dramatic testimony was provided by defense witness Dr. Seymour Halleck, a psychiatrist and adjunct professor of law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Halleck, who had interviewed Smith for a total of 15 hours, described her as a woman scarred by the suicide of her father when she was a child, and molestation by her stepfather when she was a teen. Suicide had long been on her mind, and she had attempted it twice previously. Smith, he said, was so desperate not to be alone and to be liked that in the weeks before the drownings, she had sex with her stepfather Bev Russell, her estranged husband David Smith, Findlay and Findlay's father. According to Halleck, Prozac might have alleviated her depression, but drinking only deepened it.

On the night of Oct. 25, the psychiatrist said Smith told him, she stopped at a bridge over the Broad River with the notion of jumping in with her children. "She had strong religious beliefs that her kids would survive with her in heaven," Halleck testified. The crying of her sons, though, made her get back in the car and drive on -- to John D. Long Lake. On the ramp, she let the car roll down before applying the hand brake. Again, she let it roll, then braked. But the next time she released the brake she ran from the car as if "some survival instinct" overrode her maternal one. Still, when Pope asked Halleck, "She did know right from wrong, and have the ability to make a choice?" Halleck responded, "Yes."

In summations, the prosecution hammered home the words "evil" and "wicked" and "murder." Countered Clarke: "Evilness had nothing to do with this. Mental illness, mental disorder, whatever you want to call it, had everything to do with it." In what seemed a break for Smith, the judge granted a defense request to allow the jury to consider a verdict of involuntary manslaughter. At 5:30 p.m. the panel left the courtroom. It reached a verdict some 2-1/2 hours later, at almost the same time of night the Mazda slipped into Long Lake.

This week the jury will decide whether to grant the prosecution's request that Smith be executed, or to imprison her for life. When that decision is handed down, the world will find out if the feelings for Michael and Alex are so strong that there are none left for their mother.

--Reported by Lisa H. Towle/Union

With reporting by Lisa H. Towle/Union