Nation IN BRIEF : SOUTH CAROLINA : Jury Weighs Death Penalty for Mother

Prosecutors in the double-murder trial of Susan Smith asked jurors to consider the young mother’s “nine days of deceit,” when she sent the nation on a vain search for the two sons she had drowned. Smith, 23, was convicted of first-degree murder Saturday for drowning the boys--3-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alex--in a South Carolina lake on Oct. 25. She initially blamed a carjacker, prompting a nine-day national manhunt, but later admitted she rolled her car into the lake with the boys strapped inside. The same panel of nine men and three women that found Smith guilty must now decide, after hearing new arguments and testimony, whether she should die in South Carolina’s electric chair. Under state law, anything short of a unanimous verdict in this phase would mean life in prison.