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Thread: Pamela Smart

  1. #1
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Pamela Smart




    Pamela Smart says she dreams of freedom every day


    BEDFORD HILLS, N.Y. — Pamela Smart said she can't imagine living the rest of her life in prison, where she has been sentenced for her role in the death of her husband.

    She said her sentence of life without parole is unfair compared to the sentences handed out to the other people involved in the case. Billy Flynn, the man who shot and killed Gregg Smart, may go free in June after he was granted parole.

    "It's hard for people to understand that this really means life," she said. "It's a very serious sentence, and honestly, I think it's worse than the death penalty. It is, because even the death penalty has an end."

    Pamela Smart was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder and accomplice to first-degree murder for orchestrating the murder of her husband.

    Flynn pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. Pamela Smart said her sentence is unjust compared to his.

    "I think forgiveness is a good thing, but why is there no forgiveness for me?" she said.

    Pamela Smart spoke to News 9's Jean Mackin from the maximum-security Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in New York where she is serving her sentence.

    May 1 will mark 25 years since Flynn killed Gregg Smart. He testified that his lover, Pamela Smart, the 22-year-old director of media services at Winnacunnet High School, convinced him to pull the trigger.

    Pamela Smart said that isn't true.

    "No. Absolutely no," she said. "I didn't want him to. I didn't ask him to."

    She said that's why she can't express remorse.

    "I can't have remorse for something that I didn't do," she said.

    She said her greatest responsibility and greatest mistake was having a relationship with the teenager.

    "I think somewhere psychologically, I didn't want to feel responsible in any way for this horrible crime, but now I've come to a place where I know my bad choices and my bad decisions contributed to what happened and contributed to Gregg's death," she said.

    With her appeals exhausted, Pamela Smart said she wants the governor and Executive Council to consider a sentence reduction that would give her an opportunity at parole, like the four teen boys convicted in the crime.

    "I don't think that's fair, and I think the governor should take a second look at my sentence and would hope that she would grant me the mercy and compassion that was extended to them," Pamela Smart said.

    She said it's difficult to change hearts and minds in New Hampshire, where she insists an unfair trial, media coverage and Hollywood movies have created a caricature of the real Pamela Smart.

    "I can see why people hate me," she said. "I have no problem understanding why people hate me because of everything they've been fed, but it's just not true."

    While she's not permitted to contact her husband's family, she said she's hoping they also reconsider.

    "I would hope they would find a place where they could let go of the hatred that they have toward me," she said.

    In an interview with News 9 before he died, Gregg Smart's father said there was a chance the family might begin to change their minds.

    "I'm just saying to her if she ever admits that she did it, we may have other considerations to talk to her about at that time," Bill Smart said. "At this time, we just want to go on with our lives and be happy."

    Pamela Smart said that admitting to the crime is something she can't do.

    "To me, that's very sad, and I've thought if I actually committed this murder and was guilty, I would probably be released, and because I've maintained my innocence and I've continued to do so, then I'm eternally punished for that," she said.

    In prison, she has her own cell, 7 by 10 feet. She's a peer counselor and a leader in the church.

    Her mother and father visit several times a year, and she admits she dreams about being free one day.

    "Oh, I think about being free. Every single day, every day," she said. "I definitely dream about it, but I think about it every day. And there are days I say to myself, 'What if I never get out of here? What if I die in here?"

    http://www.wmur.com/special-reports/...y-day/31874724

  2. #2
    Senior Member CnCP Addict TrudieG's Avatar
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    Oh my dear neighbor and I really mean that the prison she is in is practically in my back yard one street over lol. But seriously If it weren't for Pam Smart her husband would be alive today. The tape that girl Cecilia made Pam practically admitted she was totally involved I do not feel one bit sorry for her.

  3. #3
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Triggerman in Pamela Smart case freed from prison

    WARREN, Maine -- The triggerman in the Pamela Smart murder case has been released from prison, CBS Boston reports.

    William Flynn became a free man early Thursday after serving nearly 25 years for shooting Gregg Smart in Derry, New Hampshire.

    Flynn was 16 years old and known as "Billy" in 1990 when he and three friends participated in what prosecutors said was Pamela Smart's plot to kill her husband. Flynn pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and served his sentence in Maine.

    Also being released on parole, later on Thursday in New Hampshire, is Patrick "Pete" Randall, who restrained Gregg Smart while Flynn shot him in the head.

    Pamela Smart, who was 22 when her husband was killed, is serving life in prison without the chance of parole. She admitted seducing Flynn but said she didn't plan her husband's murder.

    Flynn and Randall are the last of four teens involved in the murder to be paroled from prison.

    "People can feel sorry for them as much as they want. They can cry as much as they want. But nonetheless, they went in to my condo, they put my husband on his knees and they killed him while he begged for his life. And I wasn't there for that," Pam Smart told CBS Boston in a jailhouse interview earlier this week.

    Smart said she hopes the public will remember her sensationalized trial as unfair.

    "It was just me, this average person up against the state and all its resources, and it was just unbalanced," Smart said.

    In a statement released on her behalf by spokesperson Eleanor Pam, Smart said, "Bill Flynn and Patrick Randall are leaving prison today, years in advance of their scheduled release date. Over and over they have been rewarded for their expressions of contrition for killing Gregory Smart. But it is one thing to say you are remorseful and another to be remorseful.

    "Pamela Smart, on the other hand, has been condemned and punished for her failure to admit any role in the murder of her husband. This is widely interpreted as a failure to take responsibility for her actions. And so she is dismissed and reviled, deemed ineligible for forgiveness or mercy. But how can anyone take responsibility for an crime they did not commit? This is the cruel dilemma of all innocent people.

    "Does anyone believe that Pamela Smart would rather spend the rest of her life in prison simply because she is prideful and stubborn? Nonsense! The truth matters even more than does her freedom as she has demonstrated for 25 years. Pamela Smart will continue to assert her innocence until she is finally heard and believed."

    http://www.cbsnews.com/news/triggerm...d-from-prison/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  4. #4
    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
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    Petition, TV special revive Pamela Smart case

    By Diane Dimond
    The Boston Herald

    A petition has been filed with the governor of New Hampshire that breathes new life into an old and very sensational case. It asks Gov. Chris Sununu to embrace this era’s evolved thinking on prison sentencing, specifically the sentence of life without parole.

    A key section of the 695-page petition reads, “The New Hampshire Constitution’s goal of punishment being ‘to reform, not to exterminate’ warrants relief for Pamela Smart through commutation of her sentence to time served or to make her parole eligible.”

    Pamela Smart was 21 when she made the biggest mistake of her life. She was a newlywed living in Derry, N.H., and her husband, Gregg Smart, had admitted to cheating with another woman. Devastated, she threw herself into her job as director of media for 11 public schools. She met a dreamy-eyed almost-16-year-old student named Billy Flynn. He was a juvenile delinquent who stole vehicles, robbed people, fenced stolen goods and used drugs. Pam and Billy clicked. They liked the same music, and he was attentive where her husband was not. In early 1990, they began a brief sexual affair.

    True crime buffs will remember what happened next. Flynn and his teenage bad-boy pal Pete Randall broke into the Smarts’ condo, ransacked it to make it look like a burglary and waited for Gregg Smart. They forced Smart to his knees, and with Randall holding a knife to his throat, Flynn fired one fatal shot into his head. Pamela Smart was 40 miles away at a school board meeting.

    Police had no leads until they learned of the affair from Smart’s intern, a student named Cecelia Pierce, who swore it was Smart who had devised the murder plot with her young lover. Detectives placed a wire on Pierce and hoped to capture conversations proving Smart was the mastermind. The resulting tapes were of bad quality and barely audible in many spots, but Smart was heard telling Pierce to lie to police or they would all “go to jail.” Smart would later explain she was desperate for information and only pretending to know about the murder plot so Pierce would reveal what she knew.

    Flynn, Randall and two teens who waited in the getaway car were arrested. They were inexplicably kept in adjacent cells for several months, making it easy for them to coordinate their stories. The boys mistakenly believed they’d only have to serve time until they were 18, so they stayed silent. But when the prosecutor decided to try them as adults and pursue the death penalty, they suddenly spoke and claimed Smart had concocted the crime, convinced them to kill so she and Flynn could be together.

    A controversial plea bargain was struck with the kids. No charges were brought against Pierce even though she had helped the boys try to get a gun and reduced sentences for Flynn and Randall. In exchange, they all agreed to testify against Smart.

    Pamela Smart was arrested on charges of accomplice to murder and conspiracy to commit murder and witness tampering. She has always professed her innocence. She says Flynn committed murder in a fit of rage after she told him she loved her husband and their affair was over.

    Years before O.J. Simpson’s murder case, the Smart trial was America’s first nationally televised courtroom drama. The tiny New Hampshire town became the focus of unprecedented and relentless international media coverage. Weeks before the trial started, reporters clogged the streets and blared the latest developments.

    The media labeled Smart “the Ice Princess” and “the Black Widow.” They conducted phone polls and Smart look-alike contests, and headlined her probable guilt. It all surely tainted the jury pool. But Judge Douglas Gray refused to change the trial venue. He repeatedly denied motions and witnesses that could have helped Smart. Gray also failed to follow up on multiple reports of jury misconduct. He openly hoped that Clint Eastwood would portray him in the inevitable movie. (There were two movies made. Eastwood was in neither.)

    After my thorough read of the trial transcript, and after much investigation, it’s clear that Smart’s defense attorneys also failed her. They only called one friend to vouch for her character. Their opening statement to the jury was lackluster, the closing statement downright embarrassing. Immediately after the verdict, Judge Gray announced the mandatory sentence: life in prison with no possibility of parole — ever. Every appeal by Smart has been rejected.

    Twenty-eight years later, Smart, now 51, remains behind bars at the maximum-security women’s prison in Bedford Hills, N.Y. Her release date is 99/99/9999. As for Flynn and Randall, the pair who committed murder? They both won parole in 2015 and are free.

    I have visited and interviewed Smart several times. She has earned two master’s degrees in prison and helped countless inmates advance their education, and she is active in prison culture and church activities. She asked me recently, “Even if people think I’m guilty, which I’m not, haven’t I served enough time?”

    That is the question now before Gov. Sununu. More on this case next week.

    http://www.bostonherald.com/opinion/...ela_smart_case
    In the Shadow of Your Wings
    1 A Prayer of David. Hear a just cause, O Lord; attend to my cry! Give ear to my prayer from lips free of deceit!

  5. #5
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Pamela Smart denied chance at freedom decades after killing

    By Kathy McCormack
    Associated Press

    CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Pamela Smart, a former high school employee convicted of recruiting her teenage lover to kill her husband, was denied a sentence reduction hearing Wednesday, more than 30 years after a sensational trial that inspired books and a Nicole Kidman movie.

    Smart was 22 and working as a high school media coordinator when she began an affair with the 15-year-old student who shot and killed her husband, Gregory Smart, in 1990. Although she denied knowledge of the plot, she was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder and other crimes and sentenced to life without parole. The student, William Flynn, and three other teens cooperated with prosecutors, served shorter sentences and have been released.

    Smart’s request was rejected in a 5-0 vote by a New Hampshire state council. It’s the third time Smart has asked a council for a hearing. Now 54, she has exhausted all of her judicial appeal options.

    “I am absolutely convinced that there’s no evidence or argument” to grant a commutation request, councilor Janet Stevens said during a short discussion.

    One thing that was different in this petition is that Smart apologized to her husband’s family for the first time.

    “I offer no excuses for my actions and behavior,” she said in a recorded statement that was sent as a DVD to the attorney general’s office in December. "I’m to blame."

    “I regret that it took me so long to apologize to the Smart family, my own family, and everyone else. But I think that I wasn’t at a place where I was willing to own that or face that,” she said. “I was young and selfish and I wasn’t thinking about the consequences of what I was doing.”

    In the state’s response, Jeffery Strelzin, associate attorney general, wrote that Smart has told a false narrative for over 30 years and just because she’s decided to change that now “does not mean that she has truly changed and fully acknowledged all the crimes she committed as an accomplice and conspirator in her husband’s murder, and the perpetrator of witness tampering.”

    “Decades of lies cannot be undone in an instant by newfound claims of remorse and a vague acceptance of responsibility,” Strelzin, who opposed a sentence reduction, added.

    The trial was a media circus and one of the first high-profile cases about a sexual affair between a school staff member and a student. Joyce Maynard wrote “To Die For” in 1992, drawing from the Smart case. That inspired a 1995 film of the same name, starring Nicole Kidman and Joaquin Phoenix.

    Flynn testified that Smart told him she needed her husband killed because she feared she would lose everything if they divorced. He said she threatened to break up with him if he didn’t kill Gregory Smart.

    In addition to earning two master’s degrees in a Bedford Hills, New York, prison, Smart has tutored fellow inmates, has been ordained as a minister, and is part of an inmate liaison committee. Many letters of support from inmates, supervisors and others were included in her application.

    Besides saying that she is remorseful and has been rehabilitated, Smart’s appeal noted pardons granted to three other women in New Hampshire in murder cases. But the state countered that the cases involved less serious second-degree murder charges and the other women did not entice a juvenile to commit murder.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime...pVKJ?ocid=EMMX
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

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