New Hampshire governor rejects hearing for Pamela Smart, sentenced to life for husband's 1990 death

New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte has rejected the latest petition for a condemnation simplification proceeding from Pamela Smart

CONCORD, N.H. -- New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte rejected connected Thursday the latest petition for a condemnation simplification proceeding from Pamela Smart, who is serving beingness successful situation for orchestrating the execution of her hubby by her teenage pupil successful 1990.

Smart, 57, was a 22-year-old precocious schoolhouse media coordinator erstwhile she began an matter with a 15-year-old lad who aboriginal fatally changeable her husband, Gregory Smart, successful Derry. The shooter was freed successful 2015 aft serving a 25-year sentence. Though Smart denied cognition of the plot, she was convicted of being an accomplice to first-degree execution and different crimes and sentenced to beingness without parole.

It took until past twelvemonth for Smart to instrumentality afloat work for her husband’s death. In a video released successful June, she said she spent years deflecting blasted “almost arsenic if it was a coping mechanism.”

On Wednesday, Smart wrote to Ayotte and the governor’s Executive Council asking for a proceeding connected commuting her sentence. But Ayotte, a Republican elected successful November, said she has reviewed the lawsuit and decided it is not deserving of a proceeding earlier the five-member panel.

“People who perpetrate convulsive crimes indispensable beryllium held accountable to the law,” said Ayotte, a erstwhile authorities lawyer general. “I instrumentality precise earnestly the enactment of granting a pardon proceeding and judge this process should lone beryllium utilized successful exceptional circumstances.”

In her letter, Smart said she has spent the past 35 years “becoming a idiosyncratic who tin and volition beryllium a contributing subordinate of society.” Calling herself “what rehabilitation looks like,” she noted that she has taken work for her husband’s death.

“I person apologized to Gregg’s household and my ain for the beingness taken and for my beingness denied to my parents and household for each these agelong years,” she wrote.

Smart’s proceedings was a media circus and 1 of America’s archetypal high-profile cases astir a intersexual matter betwixt a schoolhouse unit subordinate and a student. The student, William Flynn, testified that Smart told him she needed her hubby killed due to the fact that she feared she would suffer everything if they divorced. Flynn and 3 different teens cooperated with prosecutors and each person since been released.

The lawsuit inspired Joyce Maynard's 1992 publication “To Die For” and the 1995 movie of the aforesaid name, starring Nicole Kidman and Joaquin Phoenix.

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