State Supreme Court to consider Pam Smart's request for commutation hearing
Feb. 13—The New Hampshire Supreme Court will hear arguments Tuesday on whether to order the Executive Council to hold a hearing on Pamela Smart's petition to commute her sentence.
Smart, 55, has spent more than half her life in prison since being convicted in 1991 as an accomplice to the murder of her husband, Gregg Smart.
She was 22 in 1990 when she was accused of orchestrating her husband's murder with the help of a 15-year-old lover, William "Billy" Flynn, and three of his teenage friends, who tried to make the fatal shooting in the Smarts' Derry home look like a botched robbery. The plot unraveled, and the ensuing trial attracted worldwide interest.
The Executive Council has denied Smart's request for a commutation hearing three times, most recently in March 2022. She is now asking the Supreme Court to order that a hearing be held.
The Supreme Court hearing is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. today .
Last summer, advocates for Smart told the Union Leader she has worked hard in prison to turn her life around, earning graduate degrees and serving as a mentor to other inmates.
"Pam Smart is what rehabilitation looks like," said Lonnie Soury, co-founder of Family and Friends of the Wrongfully Convicted, who met Smart through his work with other women incarcerated at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in New York. "She has spent her 33 years helping other women."
Mark Sisti, an attorney representing Smart, filed a "writ of mandamus" with the state Supreme Court, asking them to compel the governor and Executive Council to give Smart a hearing. "Equally or more culpable defendants, like the actual murderers, were released after serving just 25 years."
Sisti argues the Executive Council's denial of a hearing for Smart was arbitrary.
In a response, the Attorney General's Office urged the Supreme Court to dismiss Smart's plea, arguing that no one hoping for clemency is entitled to any particular procedure or amount of consideration. The whole process is arbitrary, the AG's office wrote.
The Attorney General's Office also is arguing that the Supreme Court has no role in a request for clemency, which is a power the state constitution gives to the executive branch — the governor and Executive Council.
At the time of her husband's murder, Smart admitted to having an affair with Flynn but denied her involvement in the killing.
"It took years, even decades, for me to accept responsibility and I must carry that burden, alone and deservedly, for the rest of my life recognizing that the pain and suffering I caused are irreparable," Smart wrote in a 2021 letter to Gov. Chris Sununu and the Executive Council.
"I apologize to the entire Smart family, my own family, and all who were directly or indirectly impacted by my actions and misjudgment. I blamed others for my incarceration because I was immature, selfish and proud. I refused to see my own role in Gregg's death and instead referred blame elsewhere."
"This burden is something I can never — and should never — be free of, because my actions have forever changed the course of many lives, including my own," Smart wrote.
Smart was sentenced to life without parole after being convicted by a Rockingham County jury in 1991 of accomplice to first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder and tampering with a witness in connection with the shooting death of her 24-year-old husband, to whom she had been married for less than a year.
Smart appealed her conviction all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case. She filed her first petition for commutation in 2004.
