Pamela Smart denied chance at freedom decades after killing

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...