Pamela Smart, serving life, seeks a new trial as a New Hampshire judge weighs her latest petition
CONCORD, NH (AP) — Lawyers Pamela SmartSentenced to life in prison for orchestrating the 1990 murder of her husband by his teenage student, she hopes a New Hampshire judge will allow her final verdict on Monday petition for a new trial to move forward.
Smart’s trial was one of the first to be broadcast live on television from start to finish. She was a 22-year-old high school media coordinator in Derry when she became involved with a 15-year-old boy who later fatally shot her husband, Gregory Smart.
the shooter was released In 2015 after a 25-year prison sentence. Although Smart denied knowledge of the conspiracy, he was convicted of accessory to first-degree murder and other crimes and sentenced to life in prison without parole.
The petition for habeas corpus relief was filed in January. The court aims to overturn his conviction for what his lawyers claim are various constitutional violations.
Smart, 58, will be allowed to attend the hearing remotely at the Bedford Hills Correctional Institution for Women in New York.
Smart’s lawyers said the recordings during the trial were inaccurate
Smart’s attorneys argue that prosecutors misled the jury by presenting faulty transcripts of Smart’s secretly recorded conversations that contained words that could not be heard on the recordings.
Although the words they claimed were not heard, the report included the word “killed” in the sentence “you killed your husband”, “suppressed” in the sentence “I will be caught” and the word “murder” in the sentence “this would be a perfect murder”.
“Modern science confirms what common sense has always told us: When people are given a scenario, they inevitably hear the words shown to them,” Smart’s attorney, Matthew Zernhelt, said in a statement earlier this year. he said. “Jurors were not evaluating the record independently; they were being guided toward a conclusion, and that direction determined the verdict.”
Smart’s lawyers also argued that the verdict was due to media attention and faulty instructions given to the jury. They argued that jurors were told they had to find that Smart acted with premeditation and were not told they had to consider only the evidence presented at trial.
They also argued that the trial court gave him a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole for being an accessory to first-degree murder, even though New Hampshire did not mandate that sentence for the charge.
State lawyers say Smart’s petition should be denied
The state’s attorneys asked the judge to deny the petition, saying nearly all of the claims were rejected because they had already been asserted on appeal and decided by the New Hampshire Supreme Court or could have been asserted on appeal in court but were not.
They noted that during Smart’s trial, the defense only raised concerns that the recording transcripts failed to explain the “doubling” of voices when two people spoke at the same time. The judge instructed jurors to use what they heard if the tapes differed from what they read. The state’s Supreme Court noted that Smart’s attorneys “made no specific showing in the transcripts about recording inaccuracies or how he might have been biased.”
The state’s lawyers said Smart’s team failed to prove other allegations, such as ineffective assistance of counsel and that the case was tried in New York rather than New Hampshire.
Smart’s legal options are limited. He has failed several times to get sentencing hearings before an elected state council in New Hampshire that approves contracts and appointees to courts and government agencies. He appealed a denial to the state Supreme Court. rejected his petition In 2023.
His final petition was submitted later New Hampshire Governor Kelly Ayotte He rejected a request last year to bring the matter back before the council. Ayotte said he reviewed the case and decided it did not deserve a hearing.
Smart took full responsibility for her husband’s death in video
Smart took full responsibility for her husband’s death in 2024. He said in a video that he spent years trying to deflect the accusation “almost as if it was a coping mechanism.”
Smart’s case was a media circus and one of America’s first high-profile cases involving a sexual relationship between a school employee and a student. Student William Flynn testified that Smart told him she wanted her husband killed because she was afraid she would lose everything if they divorced and threatened to leave him if she didn’t kill him. Flynn and three other teenagers cooperated with prosecutors and all were later released.
Flynn and 17-year-old Patrick Randall entered the Smarts’ Derry apartment and, upon entering, forced Gregory Smart to his knees. As Randall held a knife to the man’s throat, Flynn fired a hollow-point bullet into his head. Both pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and were sentenced to 28 years to life in prison. He was granted parole in 2015. The other two young people were sentenced to prison and released.
The case inspired Joyce Maynard’s 1992 book “To Die For” and the 1995 film of the same name starring Nicole Kidman and Joaquin Phoenix.
