On the shore of John D. Long Lake, where Michael and Alex Smith were drowned by their mother, teddy bears are left out to become matted and silk angels to rot-all sorts of beautiful little things are offered to be ruined through exposure to water.
Sunday, the day after Susan Smith was convicted of murdering the boys, scores of families traveled to the site to leave private memorials and to look into the lake for an explanation of the deaths of two toddlers they never met.
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Smith’s murder trial, many of them said, has not provided an explanation. Nor have the difficulties of Smith’s life that her defense presented to jurors last week: psychiatric depression, a history of suicide attempts, and sexual molestation at a young age.
“I keep trying to understand,” said Debbi Acuna, a 39-year-old from nearby Spartanburg who is, like Smith, a secretary and the mother of two small children. “When you become a mommy, you forget about yourself. Your two children become your life.”
Like much of the rest of the country, Acuna’s only contact with 14-month old Alex and 3-year-old Michael has been through moments of videotape on television and a few snapshots in newspapers.
That is enough, she said, that she needs an understanding of the crime “for an inner healing of myself.”
There has been nothing in the trial to give the jurors that kind of emotional tie to Michael and Alex. But that will change Monday when the trial moves into the penalty phase in which the jury will decide whether or not Smith is to be put to death.
The boys seemed almost left out of the courtroom proceedings last week. The photos of the two boys that their father, David Smith, and his family had been wearing on their shirts were banned. And photographs of their bodies were deemed too prejudicial to be used as evidence.
Their sole appearance was through a diver’s description of the moment he sighted their remains, by glimpsing a small hand floating behind the window of the car Smith rolled into the lake Oct. 25. The testimony drew in the breath of the entire courtroom.
This week, prosecutors will be working to focus the trial less on an emotionally vulnerable mother and more on defenseless boys.
After a week in which the proceedings concentrated on the mental state of Smith, 23, it took the jury 2 1/2 hours to decide to convict her of murder rather than the lesser crime of involuntary homicide.
Prosecutor Tommy Pope has suggested he again will try to introduce photographs of the bodies of the boys, evidence that might shift the jury’s attention to the victims’ trauma.
The most compelling testimony could come from David Smith, 24, whom Pope may place on the stand for an emotional description of the boys.
But the defense, which has seemed to be trying the penalty phase from the start, worked assiduously last week to blunt the impact of David Smith as a witness. Defense lawyers elicited testimony last week portraying David Smith as a philanderer and abusive husband.
Susan Smith’s lawyers also subpeonaed details of a book deal the boys’ father signed for a reported six-figure advance.
Although David Smith released a statement declaring that he would donate to charity all but $20,000 of that amount, defense attorneys still might try to depict him as profiteering from the boys’ death.
David Bruck, Susan Smith’s lead attorney, said most of the evidence the defense wishes the jury to consider in deciding on a sentence already has been presented.
But two potentially powerful witnesses have not yet testified: Beverly Russell, the stepfather who molested Smith and is now footing her legal bill, and Smith herself.