New Hampshire governor rejects hearing for Pamela Smart, sentenced to life for husband’s 1990 death
Pamela Smart answers questions from the defense in her murder conspiracy trial, March 18, 1991, in Rockingham County Superior Court in Exeter, N.H. (AP Photo/Jon Pierre Lasseigne, File)
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte rejected on Thursday the latest request for a sentence reduction hearing from Pamela Smart, who is serving life in prison for orchestrating the murder of her husband by her teenage student in 1990.
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Smart, 57, 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 sentenced to life without parole.
It took until last year for Smart to take full responsibility for her husband’s death. In a video released in June, she said she spent years deflecting blame “almost as if it was a coping mechanism.”
On Wednesday, Smart wrote to Ayotte and the governor’s Executive Council asking for a hearing on commuting her sentence. But Ayotte, a Republican elected in November, said she has reviewed the case and decided it is not deserving of a hearing before the five-member panel.
“People who commit violent crimes must be held accountable to the law,” said Ayotte, a former state attorney general. “I take very seriously the action of granting a pardon hearing and believe this process should only be used in exceptional circumstances.”
In her letter, Smart said she has spent the last 35 years “becoming a person who can and will be a contributing member of society.” Calling herself “what rehabilitation looks like,” she noted that she has taken responsibility for her husband’s death.
“I have apologized to Gregg’s family and my own for the life taken and for my life denied to my parents and family for all these long years,” she wrote.
Smart’s trial was a media circus and one of America’s first high-profile cases about a sexual affair between a school staff member and a student. The student, William Flynn, testified that Smart told him she needed her husband killed because she feared she would lose everything if they divorced. Flynn and three other teens cooperated with prosecutors and all have since been 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.