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Pamela Smart’s lawyers are challenging her murder conviction over the 1990 killing of her husband, Gregory Smart, arguing in a new legal filing that she “did not receive the fair trial that she was due.”
In a petition for writ of habeas corpus filed Monday, January 5 and viewed by Us Weekly, Pamela’s lawyers wrote that Smart’s constitutional rights were denied during her trial, in which they said several errors were made.
“Pamela Smart’s case was subjected to a type of media scrutiny that the world had never seen….It was a trial by media in the purest form,” the petition stated, in part.
In March 1991, Pamela’s 14-day-long trial took place in New Hampshire, where she was accused of arranging the murder of her husband, according to the New Hampshire Bar Association.
Nearly a year earlier, Gregory was fatally shot in their home in Derry by a teenager Pamela is accused of having an affair with, the organization reported. Gregory’s body was found on May 1, 1990. He was 24 years old.
The teen allegedly involved in the affair, then 15-year-old William “Billy” Flynn, was a student at Winnacunnet High School in Hampton, where Pamela worked as a media coordinator, The Associated Press reported.
At the end of Pamela’s trial, she was found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder, accomplice to first-degree murder, and witness tampering, according to the New Hampshire Bar Association. She was 22 at the time of her conviction.
Pamela is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole, according to her attorneys. For the last 30 years, they said she has been imprisoned at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women in New York.
The petition for writ of habeas corpus, which seeks to reverse conviction, cites “groundbreaking forensic research and multiple constitutional violations that show she was convicted through the use of deceptive evidence that shaped — and distorted — what jurors heard,” Zernhelt Law LLC, the law firm representing her, said in a news release shared with Us.
The petition was filed in New Hampshire and New York.
In the legal challenge, her attorneys argue that a new scientific study undermines key evidence used to convict Pamela, 57.
They allege that the jury was provided with misleading audio tapes that assigned “words to Ms. Smart that are not audible on the accompanying recordings, steering jurors toward a predetermined and biased interpretation and conclusion.”
“Modern science confirms what common sense has always told us: when people are handed a script, they inevitably hear the words they are shown,” one of Pamela’s attorneys, Matthew Zernhelt, said in a statement.
The attorneys also allege that the jury’s verdict was strongly influenced by media coverage and that there was an “unauthorized acceptance of guilt.”
Prior to the petition’s filing on January 5, Pamela requested a sentence reduction hearing, which was denied by New Hampshire Governor Kelly Ayotte in May, according to The Associated Press.
A spokesman for the New Hampshire attorney general addressed Pamela’s latest legal challenge to her conviction and told The Associated Press “that the State maintains Ms. Smart received a fair trial and that her convictions were lawfully obtained and upheld on appeal.”
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Flynn was also sentenced in connection with the killing of her husband, as well as three of Flynn’s friends, according to the New Hampshire Bar Association.
In 1990, Flynn shot Gregory in the head after he was accused of entering the Smarts’ home with another teen, Patrick Randall, who allegedly held Gregory at knifepoint while he was shot, The Associated Press reported.
Flynn and Randall were sentenced to 28 years to life on a second-degree murder charge, according to The Associated Press. Two other teenagers were also sentenced in connection with Gregory’s death.
Flynn and his friends have since been released from prison, according to the New Hampshire Bar Association.
In a statement, Zernhelt said that Pamela’s “conviction cannot withstand constitutional scrutiny, and it must be overturned before it claims any more of her life.”
Two films are based on Pamela’s case, according to the New Hampshire Bar Association: Murder in New Hampshire: The Pamela Smart Story starring Helen Hunt and Chad Allen, as well as To Die For, with Nicole Kidman and Joaquin Phoenix.
