Executive Council to hear Pam Smart's latest bid for clemency next week
The state's Executive Council will consider next week Pamela Smart's latest effort to commute her life sentence for orchestrating her husband's murder 35 years ago.
Smart, 57, has spent more than half her life in prison since being convicted in 1991 as an accomplice to the murder of her husband, Gregg Smart.
She was 22 in 1990 when she was accused of orchestrating her husband's murder with the help of a 15-year-old lover, William 'Billy' Flynn, and three of his teenage friends, who tried to make the fatal shooting in the Smarts' Derry home look like a botched robbery. The plot unraveled, and the ensuing trial attracted worldwide interest.
Smart was sentenced to life without parole.
The Executive Council has denied Smart's request for a commutation hearing three times, most recently in March 2022. A request before the state Supreme Court to order a hearing be held was denied in 2023, with the justices saying they had no legal jurisdiction to compel the state's executive branch to grant Smart's petition for a commutation hearing or any say in how that hearing must be conducted.
The Executive Council is scheduled to meet on Wednesday at 10 a.m. at the State House in Concord.
In a letter to Gov. Kelly Ayotte and members of the Executive Council, Smart says she is the longest-serving female inmate in the New York State prison system, having spent 35 years behind bars.
'I ask for your mercy and for your recognition that I am not the 22-year-old who found herself involved in a terrible crime,' Smart writes. 'I am a 57-year-old woman who has spent the past 35 years growing, understanding, seeking guidance from above and becoming a person who can and will be a contributing member of society for my remaining years.
Pam Smart
Pamela Smart testifies during her 1991 trial in the murder of her husband, Gregg.
'I am what rehabilitation looks like. I have taken responsibility for the tragic murder of my husband Gregg Smart. I have apologized to Gregg's family and my own for the life taken and for my life denied to my parents and family for all these long years.'
Smart goes on to write she has helped 'hundreds' of fellow female inmate, from helping individuals and families impacted by AIDS to teaching young women how to rebuild their lives.
Attorney Ron Kuby said Smart is 'destined to die' in a New York prison unless the Executive Council acts.
'All she is seeking is a fair hearing before the counsel, where she can present evidence of who she is now, rather than the person she was when she was twenty-two,' Kuby said in a statement. 'Everyone who knows Ms. Smart, and every expert who has examined her, unanimously agree that she has become an asset to society and poses the lowest possible risk of recidivism. Yet she is bound by an inflexible sentence that was imposed some 35 years ago. It is time for a re-examination.'
Smart was found guilty of accomplice to first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder and tampering with a witness in connection with the shooting death of her husband, to whom she had been married for less than a year.
Smart received a sentence of life without possibility of parole. She remains behind bars at the maximum-security women's prison in Bedford Hills, New York.
Smart appealed her conviction all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case. She filed her first petition for commutation in 2004.
Aside from Smart, everyone else convicted in the case has been paroled, thanks to deals for reduced sentencing in exchange for their testimony against Smart.
pfeely@unionleader.com
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