A New Hampshire council announced on Wednesday that it will not be commuting a life sentence for Pamela Smart, who had her 15-year-old lover fatally shoot her husband in 1990.
The Executive Council Wednesday voted unanimously, 5-0, against reducing Smart’s sentence. Smart, 54, was convicted of being an accomplice to murder after she convinced her underage boyfriend, William Flynn, and three other teens to kill her husband, Gregg Smart, in Derry and stage it to look like a botched robbery, InDepthNH.org reported.
“My actions and terrible judgment…I offer no excuses for my behavior 31 years ago and I assume the blame for all the pain that resulted,” she reportedly wrote in her request for commutation. “[It is] a burden I will carry for the rest of my life.”
Flynn was 17 when he testified that Pamela Smart, then 22, wanted her husband dead because she believed she would lose everything in a divorce, according to the Daily Mail.
Pamela Smart reportedly threatened to break up with Flynn if he did not kill her husband. With the help of three other teens, Flynn later shot Gregg Smart in the head in the condo he shared with his wife.
The four teens who carried out the 1990 slaying are all adults and have been freed from prison. WMUR reported that this was the third time Pamela Smart has tried to have her life sentence reduced.
The attorney general’s office said Pamela Smart can make another bid for commutation in two years.
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[Featured image: Pamela Smart/Derry Police Department]
