Convicted killer Susan Smith has told a South Carolina parole board God had forgiven her for murdering her two toddlers in 1994.
The seven-member board voted unanimously to deny Smith's parole on Wednesday local time.
It was the first time she has been eligible for parole after 30 years behind bars.
Smith was convicted of killing three-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alexander in November 1994, rolling her car into a lake while both boys were strapped in their car seats.
She then falsely claimed a black man had stolen the car and abducted the boys, sparking a nine-day search before confessing to police.
"I want to say how very sorry I am," an emotional Smith told the parole board via video link on Wednesday.
"I know that what I did was horrible, and I would give anything if I could go back and change it. I loved Michael and Alex with all my heart.
"I didn't lie to get away with it, I was just scared. I didn't know how to tell the people that loved them that they would never see them again.
"I am a Christian, and God is a big part of my life. I know he has forgiven me.
"I just ask that you show that same kind of mercy as well."
The South Carolina agency had received 360 letters regarding Smith's parole application, only six of which were in favour of her release.
David Smith, Smith's ex-husband and the boys' father, was joined by multiple members of the Smith family, friends and former prosecutors from the original trial.
He testified against Smith's release with a photo of his sons pinned to his shirt.
"It's been a tough 30 years," he said.
"God gives us free choice, and she made free choice that night, to end their lives. This wasn't a tragic mistake, or something that she didn't mean to do.
"I never have felt any remorse from her, she's never expressed any to me … She came pretty close to causing me to end my life, because of the grief that she brought upon me.
"Ultimately to me, [she's served] only 15 years per child, her own children, that's just not enough."
Mr Smith was in favour of the death penalty during the 1995 trial.
The parole hearing marked the first time he had seen his ex-wife since shortly after her arrest in late 1994.
Mr Smith's daughter and Michael and Alexander's half-sister, Savannah Smith, said she had had two older brothers "stolen" from her.
"I now try to use my life as a way to live for them," she said.
"Growing up, I didn't quite understand [what had happened] but when I finally did, I felt like I had witnessed it, like I was there.
"Just for the sake of all of us, and the sake of our community, I ask that you deny her request."
Smith's lawyer, Tommy Thomas, told the board the case was "one of the most difficult" he had ever had to put forward for parole consideration.
"Today is Susan's parole hearing, so today is about Susan," he said.
"It is a mental health story. It's about the dangers of untreated mental health, it is about the lack of insight, the lack of diagnosis [and] it's about stigma."
He added Smith's family had treated her mental health issues as "embarrassing", alleging the stigma culminated in the murders.
She had also, Mr Thomas told the board, blamed herself for her father's suicide when she was a young child, leading to "severe depression".
"We need to know what was going on, why it was going on, for the board to make an informed decision," he said.
"The contributing factors in this case were multiple stress points, they converged all at the same time."
Investigators at the time were given a letter by the man Smith had been in a relationship with, in which he broke up with her and told her he was not ready to have children.
The letter was sent the week before the boys were killed.
