The flood of texts and emails sent last weekend to Linda Wojas, Pam Smart’s mother, contained some urgent, breaking news.
A story in the NY Daily News reported that the life sentence for a man named Gerard Domond had just been overturned after he served nearly 30 years in prison. They mentioned that the prosecutor in that 1989 murder case, Paul Maggiotto of the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office, had failed to disclose to the defense that the lone eyewitness against Domond had a long history of severe mental illness.
That’s why last week the judge tossed the conviction that had stood for so long. It’s why the judge figuratively pointed a finger at Maggiotto, who now practices in Concord, blaming him for sweeping psychiatric information under the rug to bolster a case.
And it’s why Wojas flipped her lid and felt a rush of hope when she heard those messages. The same attorney who fought to put her daughter away for life with no chance of parole had made an error in another murder case. Hmm.
What if something similar happened during Smart’s trial? Could Maggiotto have been hiding something that could have been favorable to Pam’s defense, Wojas wondered.
She never trusted him anyway, and has not hidden her feelings.
“I don’t feel good about that happening to him in Brooklyn, and I am not a hateful person, but he caused a lot of grief and sadness,” Wojas said this week by phone, referring to Maggiotto. “I’m sick of it and I want the truth to come out. He did something bad in Brooklyn, and I think he did it in Pam’s case too. It’s sad. How many Domonds and Smarts have there been?”
Maggiotto left Brooklyn and came here in 1990. His jet-black hair and mustache got a lot of air time during the Smart trial. He said he had no idea that Domond had deep psychiatric problems, he was not engaged in anything diobolical in the ‘89 case and there were no shenanigans during the Smart trial, either.
“I knew nothing about his psychological background,” Maggiotto said about the eyewitness in the Domond case. “I knew his history with AIDS. That’s what I thought. The guy did not come across as having any psychological issues.”
Meanwhile, Smart, now 52, is being held at the Bedford Hills Correctional in New York. She’s maintained her innocence from the start. She was a 23-year-old media coordinator at Winnacunnet High School who admitted she had an affair with a student shortly after marrying Greg Smart, but she says she never manipulated her teen lover and three of his friends to kill Greg.
Wojas, 78, has been shouting from the rooftops, first from her old home near Lake Winnisquam and now from her retirement home in Florida, insisting Pam killed no one.
She’s collected documents and recordings and other proof that she claims tell the truth. The folders are thick. She loves showing it to the media. She needs exposure, needs to keep this story afloat. She’ll go through each and every piece of paper. If you have the time.
And with the Maggiotto news coming down the pike last week, Wojas hopes she struck gold, that perhaps she has something with teeth and credibility to show that her daughter was railroaded by a corrupt prosecutor.
She knows most people think her daughter was rightfully convicted. She doesn’t care and says you wouldn’t either, walking in her shoes.
“New Hampshire desperately does not want to admit that it made a mistake,” Wojas said. “They must listen. This was underhanded. I sent that article to the governor and the five members of the executive council. Guess what I’ve always heard back from them. Nothing.”
She’s made it clear she’s not looking for a pardon. She wants the sentence commuted. Her daughter, Wojas says, has earned a master’s degree, a doctorate in biblical studies and the respect of inmates.
That doesn’t mean Smart should not have been convicted of conspiracy to commit murder, being an accomplice to murder and witness tampering.
Said Maggiotto, “Unfortunately, (Smart) is incarcerated for the rest of her life and they will look at anything to give her some form of legal argument.”
Smart’s lawyer, Mark Sisti of Chichester, sprinkled a little gas on the fire, saying he found it odd that Maggiotto never knew Domond, the defendant in the ‘89 murder trial, had mental health issues.
“If the lead prosecutor in a murder case had one eyewitness and did not know that one witness had mental health issues, then someone was not prepared,” Sisti said by phone. “I could not believe he had not prepared himself. If you speak to your client, you know. It was damning. It had him misrepresenting the state’s eyewitness in the opening statements.”
Sisti believes the entire Smart case should be revisited. “They would be foolish not to take a look,” he said.
Those texts and emails last weekend gave hope to what seems hopeless. At least that’s what Wojas said.
“They were all saying the same thing after seeing that story,” Wojas said. “They all wanted to know if something could be done about this. I’m still hoping.”