Give Pam Smart a good-faith sentence review
Atwhat point does a prison sentence — if ever — serve its purpose?
That’s a question Pamela Smart would like answered.
A lawyer for Smart, sentenced to life without parole for plotting with her teenage lover to kill her husband in 1990, argued Tuesday before New Hampshire’s highest court that the state’s Executive Council “brushed aside” her request for a chance at freedom, and petitioned to have that panel reconsider it.
Mark Sisti, Smart’s longtime attorney, argued the fivemember body didn’t spend any time reviewing Smart’s voluminous petition — which included many letters of support from inmates and supervisors — or even discuss it before rejecting her sentence-reduction request in less than threeminutes nearly a year ago.
“I’masking the only place I can go — the only place Pam can go — to say ‘Just Do Your Job,’” Sisti said.
Associate Justice James Bassett asked, “And what does that mean? What are we going to say?”
To which Sisti replied: “A meaningful, minimal due process hearing that we even get at the Department of Motor Vehicles.”
Lastmarch was the third time that Smart, who has served over 30 years in prison, had asked the Executive Council for a hearing. Now55, she has exhausted all of her judicial appeal options, and must go through the council for a sentence change. Previous petitions in 2005 and 2019 were rejected.
Pamela “Pame” Wojas, as she liked to call herself, was raised nearby inwindham, New Hampshire, went to high school at Pinkerton Academy in Derry, and after graduating with honors fromflorida State University, was hired as a media coordinator atwinnacunnet High School in Hampton.
At the time, the petite 22-year-old could have been mistaken for one of the students.
That’swhere shemet William “Billy” Flynn, then 15. Their relationship progressed from teacher and student to an affair that prosecutors allege Smart fearedwould break up her marriage, leaving her penniless.
So onmay 1, 1990, Flynn entered the Smarts’ Derry condo and fatally shot her husband Gregg Smart by firing a hollowpoint bullet into his head.
Flynn, who later pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, testified in Smart’s 1991 trial that she threatened to break upwith him if he didn’t kill her husband.
And though she didn’t pull the trigger — nor at the scene of the crime— prosecutors said she planned her husband’s death. She was convicted of being an accomplice to first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the chance of parole.
While admitting at the time she seduced Flynn, she insisted she didn’t plan her husband’s demise.
Her trial, which quickly becameamedia circus, was one of the first high-profile cases about a sexual affair between a school staffmember and a student— a seemingly an all too common occurrence now.
Joyce Maynard wrote “To
Die For” in 1992, drawing on the Smart case. That inspired a 1995 filmof the same name, starring Nicole Kidman and Joaquin Phoenix.
Flynn and three other teens implicated in the crime cooperated with prosecutors, served shorter sentences and have since been released.
The attorney general’s office has opposed Smart’s commutation requests, saying she’s never accepted full responsibility for her role in her husband’s murder.
Laura Lombardi, senior assistant attorney general, argued before New Hampshire’s highest court Tuesday that the case should not be before the court.
“This is a matter of mercy and grace, held by the executive branch,” she said.
Gov. Chris Sununu had the option of putting the commutation request on the council’s agenda, and did so, she said, adding there’s no requirement for the governor and Executive Council to create rules regarding the process.
Sisti said a life-without-parole sentence should at least offer some chance — however remote — of an official change of heart.
“I’m asking that you give
Pam Smart that little inkling, that little crack in the door where she can have hope,” he said.
In addition to earning two master’s degrees in a Bedford Hills, New York, prison, Smart has tutored fellow inmates, been ordained as a minister and is part of an inmate liaison committee.
In her last petition, she said she has been rehabilitated, and has apologized to Gregg Smart’s family.
In a September 2019 Concordmonitor interview, Pamela Smart’s mother, Lindawojas, who has dedicated her life to achieving her daughter’s release, said it was time for New Hampshire’s judicial system to stop using prison as a tool for revenge, rather than rehabilitation.
Wojas alluded to Article 18 of the state’s constitution, titled, “Penalties to be Proportioned to Offenses; True Design of Punishment,” which concludes with these words: “The true design of all punishments being to reform, not to exterminate mankind.”
Having served more than 30 years in prison for being themastermind of a crime she didn’t physically commit, while also displaying demonstrable signs of rehabilitation and contrition, we believe Pamela Smart at least deserves a thoughtful, detailed review of her case, as it pertains to the possibility of reducing her sentence.