BOSTON (AP) — Pamela Smart, who is serving life in prison for orchestrating the murder of her husband by her teenage student in 1990, is seeking to overturn her conviction over what her lawyers claim were several constitutional violations.
The petition for habeas corpus relief was filed Monday in New York, where she is being held at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women, and, in New Hampshire, where the murder happened.
“Ms. Smart’s trial unfolded in an environment that no court had previously confronted — wall-to-wall media coverage that blurred the line between allegation and evidence,” Jason Ott, who is part of Smart’s legal team, said in a statement. “This petition challenges whether a fair adversarial process took place.”
The move comes about seven months after New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte rejected a request for a sentence reduction hearing. Ayotte said she reviewed the case and decided it was not deserving of a hearing.
A spokesman for the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for New Hampshire’s attorney general stated that the State maintains Ms. Smart received a fair trial and that her convictions were lawfully obtained and upheld on appeal.
In their petition, lawyers for the 57-year-old Smart argue that prosecutors misled the jury by providing them with inaccurate transcripts of surreptitiously recorded conversations of Ms. Smart that included words that were not audible on the recordings. Among the words they claim weren’t audible but 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.'
“Modern science confirms what common sense has always told us: when people are handed a script, they inevitably hear the words they are shown,” Smart’s attorney, Matthew Zernhelt, said in a statement. “Jurors were not evaluating the recordings independently — they were being directed toward a conclusion, and that direction decided the verdict.”
Lawyers also argued the conviction should be overturned due to the extensive media attention and faulty jury instructions. They contended that jurors were told they must find that Smart acted with premeditation, which was not clearly aligned with the evidence presented at trial.
Moreover, they argued that she received a mandatory life sentence without parole for being an accomplice to first-degree murder, even though New Hampshire does not require such a sentence for the charge.
Smart was a 22-year-old high school media coordinator when she initiated an affair with a 15-year-old boy who subsequently fatally shot her husband, Gregory Smart, in Derry. The shooter, William Flynn, served 25 years and was released in 2015. Although Smart denied knowledge of the murder plot, she was convicted of being an accomplice to first-degree murder and received a life sentence without parole.
Smart later admitted in a video released in June 2024 that she spent years deflecting blame for her husband’s death, describing it as a coping mechanism.
Her trial garnered significant media attention, marking one of America's first high-profile cases surrounding a sexual affair between a school employee and a student. Testimony revealed that Smart pressured Flynn to kill her husband, stating she feared losing everything in a divorce and threatening to end their relationship if he refused.
On the day of the murder, Flynn and 17-year-old Patrick Randall forced Gregory Smart to his knees in their condominium, with Randall holding a knife to his throat while Flynn shot him. Both pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, receiving sentences of 28 years to life, and were paroled in 2015. Two additional teenagers involved in the crime also served time and have since been released.
The case became culturally significant, inspiring Joyce Maynard’s 1992 book “To Die For” and a 1995 film adaptation starring Nicole Kidman and Joaquin Phoenix.
The petition for habeas corpus relief was filed Monday in New York, where she is being held at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women, and, in New Hampshire, where the murder happened.
“Ms. Smart’s trial unfolded in an environment that no court had previously confronted — wall-to-wall media coverage that blurred the line between allegation and evidence,” Jason Ott, who is part of Smart’s legal team, said in a statement. “This petition challenges whether a fair adversarial process took place.”
The move comes about seven months after New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte rejected a request for a sentence reduction hearing. Ayotte said she reviewed the case and decided it was not deserving of a hearing.
A spokesman for the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for New Hampshire’s attorney general stated that the State maintains Ms. Smart received a fair trial and that her convictions were lawfully obtained and upheld on appeal.
In their petition, lawyers for the 57-year-old Smart argue that prosecutors misled the jury by providing them with inaccurate transcripts of surreptitiously recorded conversations of Ms. Smart that included words that were not audible on the recordings. Among the words they claim weren’t audible but 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.'
“Modern science confirms what common sense has always told us: when people are handed a script, they inevitably hear the words they are shown,” Smart’s attorney, Matthew Zernhelt, said in a statement. “Jurors were not evaluating the recordings independently — they were being directed toward a conclusion, and that direction decided the verdict.”
Lawyers also argued the conviction should be overturned due to the extensive media attention and faulty jury instructions. They contended that jurors were told they must find that Smart acted with premeditation, which was not clearly aligned with the evidence presented at trial.
Moreover, they argued that she received a mandatory life sentence without parole for being an accomplice to first-degree murder, even though New Hampshire does not require such a sentence for the charge.
Smart was a 22-year-old high school media coordinator when she initiated an affair with a 15-year-old boy who subsequently fatally shot her husband, Gregory Smart, in Derry. The shooter, William Flynn, served 25 years and was released in 2015. Although Smart denied knowledge of the murder plot, she was convicted of being an accomplice to first-degree murder and received a life sentence without parole.
Smart later admitted in a video released in June 2024 that she spent years deflecting blame for her husband’s death, describing it as a coping mechanism.
Her trial garnered significant media attention, marking one of America's first high-profile cases surrounding a sexual affair between a school employee and a student. Testimony revealed that Smart pressured Flynn to kill her husband, stating she feared losing everything in a divorce and threatening to end their relationship if he refused.
On the day of the murder, Flynn and 17-year-old Patrick Randall forced Gregory Smart to his knees in their condominium, with Randall holding a knife to his throat while Flynn shot him. Both pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, receiving sentences of 28 years to life, and were paroled in 2015. Two additional teenagers involved in the crime also served time and have since been released.
The case became culturally significant, inspiring Joyce Maynard’s 1992 book “To Die For” and a 1995 film adaptation starring Nicole Kidman and Joaquin Phoenix.
