SPARTANBURG, S.C. -- The South Carolina mother convicted in 1995 of killing her two sons by rolling her car into a lake is asking for a new trial, but a prosecutor said Saturday she faces a deadline problem.
Susan Smith, 38, filed a handwritten petition Jan. 19 in Union County for post-conviction relief, claiming her Miranda rights were violated because she was questioned without a lawyer present in interviews that led to her arrest, and that her defense attorney was inadequate and didn't allow her to plead guilty.
She does not currently have a lawyer, Sixteenth Circuit Solicitor Kevin Brackett said Saturday.
The appeal comes a month after her petition in federal court for a new trial was dismissed, citing her need to first exhaust state remedies.
Smith is serving a life sentence at a maximum-security state prison near Greenwood following her July 1995 murder conviction.
She captured the national spotlight when her boys, 3-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alex, disappeared Oct. 25, 1994.
She told deputies they had been taken by a black man in a carjacking at a red light, and she cried on national television as she begged for their safe return. Nine days later, she confessed to strapping them into their car seats and letting the car roll into a lake. The boys' bodies were found in the car, submerged a few feet from a boat ramp at John D. Long Lake in Union County.
In her petition, Smith writes her history of being sexually abused should have been considered as her alibi.
At trial, Smith disclosed she was molested as a child by her stepfather.
The deadline for post-conviction relief is usually one year from an appeal, but since she never filed an appeal, it would be one year from the trial ending, Brackett said: Her first hurdle would be explaining the delay.
He said the attorney general's office will assign a prosecutor to handle the case, and Smith may be appointed a lawyer, or it may be dismissed before it gets to court because of the missed deadline.
Sometimes people file these motions because they don't have anything better to do, he said.
Smith is up for parole on Nov. 4, 2024.
