Years after admitting he molested his stepdaughter Susan Smith when she was 16, Beverly Russell testified that they had consensual sex two months before she drowned her sons.
He urged a jury Thursday to spare her life, saying he bore some of the responsibility for Smith's crime."To see unfolded before my eyes the principle of reaping and sowing, to lose Michael and Alex, to see you and (your mother) Linda crushed. You don't have all the guilt of this tragedy," he read from a letter he wrote Smith this past Father's Day.
Unless all 12 jurors vote for a death sentence, Smith, 23, will receive life in prison. A death sentence means a choice of electrocution or injection. Life in prison would make her eligible for parole in 30 years.
Russell was one of several relatives and friends to testify on behalf of Smith, who was convicted Saturday of rolling her car into a lake Oct. 25 with 3-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alex strapped in their car seats.
For nine days, she stuck to the story that a black carjacker abducted the children on a dark, desolate stretch of country road. On Nov. 3, amid an intensive search, she confessed.
Smith's lawyers contend she snapped under unbearable personal pressures and a history of mental illness. They portray the drownings as a failed suicide. Prosecutors say she killed her sons to remove an obstacle to a love affair with her wealthy boss' son.
Smith remained stoic during Russell's half-hour on the witness stand, but he was choked with emotion.
A former state Republican Party executive committee member and Christian Coalition leader, Russell sobbed while jurors watched a videotape of him playing with Alex.
In March 1988, Russell admitted sexually assaulting Smith when she was 16, but she and her mother decided not to press charges.
"When the line was crossed, I failed you, Linda, God and the rest of my family," Russell read from the letter. "My remorse goes way beyond sorrow, getting caught or anything else."
Under cross-examination by Pope, Russell acknowledged that consensual sexual relations with Smith resumed after she became a married mother. The last time was in August, he said, two months before she drowned her only children.
"If I had known at the time what the results of my sins would be, I would have mustered the strength to behave according to my responsibility," he wrote.