Lawyers for Pamela Smart, who's serving life in prison for orchestrating the murder of her husband by her teenage student in 1990, hope that a New Hampshire judge will allow her latest petition for a new trial to move forward. The judge took the matter under advisement Monday after hearing a motion by the state to dismiss it. He plans to rule in 30 to 60 days, reports the AP. Smart's trial was one of the first in the nation to be broadcast live on television from start to finish. She was a 22-year-old high school media coordinator when she began an affair with a 15-year-old boy who later fatally shot her husband, Gregory Smart, in Derry. The shooter was freed in 2015 after serving a 25-year sentence. Though Smart denied knowledge of the plot, she was convicted of being an accomplice to first-degree murder and other crimes and was sentenced to life without parole.
Her petition for habeas corpus relief was filed in January. It seeks to overturn her conviction over what her lawyers claim were several constitutional violations. Smart, 58, attended the hearing remotely from the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women in New York. At issue:
- Smart's lawyers argue that prosecutors misled the jury by providing them with inaccurate transcripts of surreptitiously recorded conversations of Smart. Among words they claim weren't audible but were included in the transcript were the word "killed" in the sentence "you had your husband killed," the word "busted" in the sentence "I'm gonna be busted" and the word "murder" in the sentence "this would have been the perfect murder."
- Smart's lawyers also argued that the verdict was tainted by faulty instructions to the jury. They argued jurors were told they must find that Smart acted with premeditation, and were not told they must consider only evidence presented at trial.
- They argued the trial court gave her a mandatory life sentence without parole for being an accomplice to first-degree murder, despite New Hampshire not mandating that sentence for the charge.
Lawyers for the state asked the judge to dismiss the petition, saying nearly all of the claims are barred because they already were raised on appeal and resolved by the New Hampshire Supreme Court, or could have been raised on appeal but were not. They noted that during Smart's trial, the defense only expressed concern that the recording transcripts allegedly failed to account for the "doubling" of voices when two people speak at once. The judge instructed jurors that if the tapes differed from what they were reading, they should use what they heard. Smart's team hasn't proven other claims, such as ineffective assistance of counsel and having the case argued in New York, rather than in New Hampshire, the lawyers for the state said.
Smart's legal options are limited. She has unsuccessfully sought a sentence reduction hearing several times with an elected state council in New Hampshire that approves contracts and appointees to the courts and state agencies. She appealed one rejection to the state Supreme Court, which dismissed her petition in 2023. Her latest petition was filed after New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte rejected her request last year to put the matter before the council again. Ayotte said the case was not deserving of a hearing.
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