By SHELLY HASKINS
Staff Writer

UNION, S.C. (7/21/95) -- After four days of hearing about Susan Smith's troubled relationships, bouts with depression and chilling confession, a jury will likely consider today whether to convict her of drowning her sons.

"I think the case will probably be over unless the prosecution does something different than they indicated they would do tonight," said David Bruck, Smith's lead lawyer.

If the jury finds Smith, 23, guilty of killing Michael, 3, and Alex, 14-months, the trial's sentencing phase will begin on Monday after a mandatory 24-hour delay.

During the sentencing phase, the jury would be asked to decide whether Smith should get the death penalty or life in prison, although Bruck indicated he may ask for an additional consideration of manslaughter because of Smith's mental state.

In testimony Friday, a nationally known psychiatrist said Smith has a lifelong history of depression and intended to kill herself along with her children when she let her car roll into John D. Long Lake last fall.

Dr. Seymour Halleck, a professor of psychiatry and law at the University of North Carolina, said Smith's "survival instincts overcame her maternal instincts," when she jumped out of the car at the last minute. But had Smith been treated for severe depression, the murders may never have happened, Halleck said.

"I feel if she had been treated with Prozac in the preceding weeks and months, the deaths of her children would have never happened."

During their talks, Halleck said she mentioned contradictory voices -- "like a devil and an angel" -- in her head, and he wondered at first if these were signs of schizophrenic hallucinations.

But she told him she did not consider the voices real. "These are just arguments I'm having with myself," he quoted her as saying.

Other defense witnesses, including Smith's former English teacher and a family friend, said Smith had been depressed since the age of 6 and suicidal since she was 10.

Her battle with depression began when her natural father, Harry Vaughan, committed suicide when she was 6, Halleck said. Like her depressed father, he said, the 23-year-old Ms. Smith is able to present a pleasant exterior that concealed serious mental illness. Her father once held his wife at gunpoint in the presence of their children.

"It appears that the outside world did not have a sense of how seriously disturbed Harry was, much like Susan Smith," Halleck testified.

Smith's problems continued when her mother, Linda Russell, remarried, he said.

Although Smith's stepfather was more affluent than Vaughan, Beverly Russell ran a strict household with more rules and structure.

"At age 13, she began to think obsessively about suicide," Halleck said.

Her depression worsened when her stepfather molested her at the age of 16.

"The family seemed to blame her as much as Bev," the psychiatrist testified.

And Smith's troubles continued through a rocky marriage to David Smith and several other unsuccessful relationships with older men, he said.

According to Halleck's recollections of 13-hours of interviews with Smith, she had sexual relations with four different men in the months preceding the Oct. 25 drownings.

He said in late summer and early fall of 1994, she was carrying on sexual relationships with Russell; her employer, Cary Findlay; Findlay's son, Tom Findlay; and her then-estranged husband, David Smith.

"Much of her sexual activity was not for her own satisfaction but is specifically concerned with pleasing others and making sure they liked her," Halleck said, adding that Smith is dependent on men and fears being alone.

He said she decided to kill herself and her children when it appeared that she would lose all of the men she was involved with. She was in the process of divorcing David Smith and had confessed to Findlay that she had slept with his father and had an affair with Russell. Findlay had already told her their relationship wouldn't work because he didn't want children.

But the idea that she would kill her children, the most important things in her life, to reclaim Findlay is "an absurd idea," Halleck said.

Halleck said she had sex with Tom Findlay, the 28-year-old textile heir, but that he was not the main focus of her life.

"A passing love affair," Halleck called it. "I found she had strong feelings for a lot of different men, and it was very unlikely that Tom Findlay was No. 1 on her list."

Mrs. Smith wrote in a letter to Findlay that she would never love anyone as much as him.

On the day of the drownings, Halleck said Smith was "frantic at the thought of losing everyone."

"She drove around aimlessly, crying and biting her fingernails," Halleck said. "She bit her fingernails until they were almost completely gone."

While driving, she stopped on the bridge over the Broad River, where she thought about jumping off with the children, he said.

She changed her mind, then drove to John D. Long Lake, where she parked on the ramp and lowered the hand brake once, then stopped. She then lowered the hand brake again and jumped out before the car hit the water and ran screaming up the ramp.

In her panicked state, Halleck said "I don't think she had a full recollection of whether her children were in the car."

On cross examination by Solicitor Tommy Pope, Halleck admitted that Smith flip-flopped on whether she knew the children were in the car and that she realized what she was doing was legally wrong.

Pope said her intention to commit suicide herself does not excuse the fact that she allowed the children to die.

"You can't suicide someone else," Pope said.

After court, Pope said Bruck "jumped the gun" with testimony about his client's mental history before the sentencing phase, when the jury decides if she should get the death penalty. He said her mental state is not relevant to Smith's guilt or innocence.

Bruck said, however, the prosecution forced him to explore Smith's mental state by their characterization of her crime as "evil" and "extremely premeditated."

In other testimony Friday:

• Iris Rogers, a former family friend of Smith's parents, testified that Smith showed signs of depression at the age of 6.
• Smith's 8th grade guidance counselor, Billy Shaw, said Smith showed a pattern of depression and said she tried to commit suicide by taking larger than normal doses of aspirin over extended periods of time. Although the doses weren't lethal, he said he interpreted the act as "a cry for help."
• Smith's 9th grade English teacher, Debra Greene, said Smith told her she was depressed a lot and had attempted suicide. Greene said she found Smith in a suicidal state on a Junior Civitan Club retreat in 1987, when Smith told her that her stepfather had fondled her.
• Halleck said Smith attempted suicide at the age of 18 by taking about 40 Tylenol and aspirin tablets. She underwent counseling but was never treated for depression.

The New York Times and the AP contributed to this story.

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