CONCORD, N.H. – A New Hampshire judge has dealt a significant blow to the legal hopes of Pamela Smart, dismissing her latest petition for a new trial in the infamous 1990 murder of her husband.
Merrimack County Superior Court Judge James Kennedy ruled on Thursday to grant the state’s motion to dismiss the petition, effectively keeping the 59-year-old inmate behind bars. Smart, a former high school media coordinator, is serving a sentence of life without the possibility of parole for her role in the killing of Gregory Smart, which was carried out by her 15-year-old student and his accomplices.
In her January petition for habeas corpus relief, Smart’s legal team argued that her 1991 conviction was tainted by several constitutional violations. Central to their claim was the allegation that prosecutors misled jurors by providing inaccurate transcripts of secret recordings. According to the defense, these transcripts included incriminating words—such as “killed,” “busted,” and “murder”—that were allegedly inaudible on the original recordings. To support this, attorneys presented a forensic study suggesting that providing written text alongside muffled audio can trick listeners into hearing words that do not actually exist.
Judge Kennedy, however, remained unmoved. In his ruling, he dismissed the forensic study as having “dubious” legal relevance, noting that it had not been fully published or subjected to rigorous review. Furthermore, the judge stated that the arguments presented by Smart’s defense had either been addressed in previous appeals or lacked sufficient legal merit to warrant a new trial. He similarly rejected claims that the case’s intense media scrutiny and flawed jury instructions had compromised the original verdict.
The trial of Pamela Smart became a national sensation in the early 1990s, marking one of the first criminal cases in American history to be broadcast live on television from start to finish. The narrative of a school employee orchestrating a murder through a clandestine affair with a teenage student captivated the public, eventually inspiring the book and film To Die For, starring Nicole Kidman.
For over three decades, Smart vehemently maintained her innocence regarding the plot. It was not until 2024 that she finally took responsibility for her husband’s death, characterizing her years of denial as a “coping mechanism.”
While William Flynn, the student who pulled the trigger, and the other teenagers involved in the conspiracy have long since served their sentences and been released, Smart remains the only individual connected to the case still incarcerated.
With Thursday’s ruling, the legal path forward for Smart appears increasingly narrow. Her defense has yet to announce whether they intend to appeal Judge Kennedy’s decision, leaving her to continue serving her life sentence as she has for the past 34 years.
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