Pamela Smart seeks another new trial in 1990 murder case

Pamela Smart’s lawyers asked a New Hampshire judge to let her pursue another new trial in the 1990 killing of Gregg Smart, while the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office moved to have the petition dismissed.

Smart is serving life without the possibility of parole after a March 1991 conviction for orchestrating her husband’s murder. Prosecutors said Smart, then 22 and working as a high school media coordinator, had an affair with William Flynn, who was 15 at the time and later shot Gregg Smart to death on May 1, 1990, in the couple’s Derry condominium, six days before their first wedding anniversary. Flynn was released in 2015 after serving 25 years.

In the latest petition, Smart’s lawyers argued that prosecutors misled jurors by providing inaccurate transcripts of secretly recorded conversations. The same case has already survived years of post-conviction litigation, including a challenge the New Hampshire Supreme Court dismissed in 2023.

The New Hampshire Bar Association called the 1991 proceeding the first televised trial in U.S. history, and contemporaneous coverage put Channel 9’s live broadcasts at record ratings. At the time, some observers called it the “trial of the century” before the O.J. Simpson proceedings later took that label.

Smart has also tried other paths toward release, including a commutation petition she filed in February 2018. A judge could rule on the request within about 60 days.