New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte<\/a> rejected a request for a sentence reduction hearing. Ayotte said she reviewed the case and decided it was not deserving of a hearing.<\/p>\nA spokesman for the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision did not immediately respond to a request for comment. <\/p>\n
A spokeman for New Hampshire\u2019s attorney general said it would not comment on pending litigation \u201cother than to note that the State maintains Ms. Smart received a fair trial and that her convictions were lawfully obtained and upheld on appeal.\u201d<\/p>\n
In their petition, lawyers for the 57-year-old Smart argue that prosecutors misled the jury by providing them with inaccurate transcripts of surreptitiously recorded conversations of Ms. Smart that included words that were not audible on the recordings. Among the words they claim weren’t audible but in the transcript were the word killed in the sentence \u201cyou had your husband killed,” the word busted in the sentence \u201cI’m gonna be busted” and the word murder in the sentence \u201cthis would have been the perfect murder.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cModern science confirms what common sense has always told us: when people are handed a script, they inevitably hear the words they are shown,\u201d Smart\u2019s attorney, Matthew Zernhelt, said in a statement. \u201cJurors were not evaluating the recordings independently \u2014 they were being directed toward a conclusion, and that direction decided the verdict.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lawyers also argued the conviction should be overturned because the verdict was tainted by the media attention and due to faulty instructions to the jury. They argued jurors were told they must find that Smart acted with premeditation, not told they must consider only evidence presented at trial.<\/p>\n
They also argued the trial court gave her a mandatory life sentence without parole for being an accomplice to first-degree murder, despite New Hampshire not mandating that sentence for the charge.<\/p>\n
Smart was a 22-year-old high school media coordinator when she began an affair with a 15-year-old boy who later fatally shot her husband, Gregory Smart, in Derry. The shooter was freed in 2015 after serving a 25-year sentence. Although Smart denied knowledge of the plot, she was convicted of being an accomplice to first-degree murder and other crimes and sentenced to life without parole.<\/p>\n
It took until 2024 for Smart to take full responsibility for her husband\u2019s death. In a video released in June, she said she spent years deflecting blame \u201calmost as if it was a coping mechanism.\u201d<\/p>\n
Smart\u2019s trial was a media circus and one of America\u2019s first high-profile cases about a sexual affair between a school employee and a student. The student, William Flynn, testified that Smart told him she needed her husband killed because she feared she would lose everything if they divorced and that she threatened to break up with him if he didn’t kill her husband. Flynn and three other teens cooperated with prosecutors and all have since been released.<\/p>\n
Flynn and 17-year-old Patrick Randall entered the Smarts\u2019 Derry condominium and forced Gregory Smart to his knees in the foyer. As Randall held a knife to the man\u2019s throat, Flynn fired a hollow-point bullet into his head. Both pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and were sentenced to 28 years to life. They were granted parole in 2015. Two other teenagers served prison sentences and have been released.<\/p>\n
The case inspired Joyce Maynard\u2019s 1992 book \u201cTo Die For\u201d and the 1995 film of the same name, starring Nicole Kidman and Joaquin Phoenix. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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