ELEGY FOR LOST BOYS

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.