The petition, filed simultaneously in New York, where Smart is held, and New Hampshire, where Gregory Smart was killed in 1990, represents the 57-year-old’s latest attempt to overturn a life-without-parole sentence that her lawyers say rested on tainted evidence, media saturation, faulty jury instructions, and an improper mandatory sentencing term.
Pamela Smart, who has spent more than three decades imprisoned for orchestrating her husband’s murder, filed a habeas corpus petition Monday arguing constitutional violations denied her a fair trial — including prosecutors’ alleged use of inaccurate transcripts that attributed key words to recordings where those words were not audible.
The petition, filed simultaneously in New York, where Smart is held at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women, and in New Hampshire, where Gregory Smart was killed in 1990, represents the 57-year-old’s latest attempt to overturn a life-without-parole sentence. Her lawyers argue the conviction rested on tainted evidence, media saturation that rendered an impartial jury impossible, faulty jury instructions, and an improper mandatory sentencing term.
“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, a member of Smart’s legal team, said in a statement. “This petition challenges whether a fair adversarial process took place.”
Transcript Accuracy at Center of Claims
Smart’s lawyers argue that prosecutors provided jurors with transcripts of surreptitiously recorded conversations that included words not actually audible on the recordings. Among the contested words were “killed” in the sentence “you had your husband killed,” “busted” in “I’m gonna be busted,” and “murder” in “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,” 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.”
The petition also argues that jurors were told they must find Smart acted with premeditation but were not instructed to consider only evidence presented at trial. Smart’s lawyers contend the trial court imposed a mandatory life sentence without parole for being an accomplice to first-degree murder even though New Hampshire law does not mandate that sentence for the charge.
State Officials Decline to Weigh In
A spokesman for the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision said the agency would have no comment. A spokesman for New Hampshire’s attorney general said the office would not comment on pending litigation “other than to note that the State maintains Ms. Smart received a fair trial and that her convictions were lawfully obtained and upheld on appeal.”
The petition comes about seven months after New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte rejected a request for a sentence reduction hearing, saying she reviewed the case and determined it was not deserving of one.
Background
Smart was 22 and working as a high school media coordinator in Derry when she began an affair with 15-year-old student William Flynn. Prosecutors presented Flynn’s testimony that Smart told him she needed her husband killed because she feared losing everything in a divorce, and that she threatened to end the relationship if Flynn did not act. Smart denied knowledge of the plot at trial.
Flynn and 17-year-old Patrick Randall entered the Smarts’ Derry condominium. As Randall held a knife to Gregory Smart’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. They were granted parole in 2015. Two other teenagers who cooperated with prosecutors also served prison sentences and have since been released.
Smart was convicted of being an accomplice to first-degree murder and other crimes and sentenced to life without parole.
In a video released in June 2024, Smart said she spent years deflecting blame “almost as if it was a coping mechanism,” marking the first time she publicly took full responsibility for her husband’s death.
Cultural Legacy
The case was among America’s first high-profile criminal prosecutions involving a sexual affair between a school employee and a student. It inspired Joyce Maynard’s 1992 book To Die For and the 1995 film of the same name, starring Nicole Kidman and Joaquin Phoenix.