Pamela Smart to ask for another chance at parole

Pamela Smart, a former high school employee serving a life without parole sentence for recruiting her teenage lover to kill her husband in 1990, will once again ask New Hampshire’s governor and the Executive Council for a hearing, her spokeswoman said Wednesday.

Gov. Chris Sununu and the council that approves government appointments, contracts and pardons rejected her request last year for a hearing for parole consideration or sentence reduction. Smart plans to refile her petition in 2021 to seek a hearing for “executive grace,” said her spokeswoman, Eleanor Pam. There’s a two-year required waiting period.

“She will be asking for a hearing, not seeking to challenge or overturn the verdict, only for re-evaluation of the sentence and the opportunity for parole at some time in the future,” Pam said in a statement.

Smart was 22 in 1990 when she was accused of plotting with student William Flynn to murder her husband, Gregory Smart. The case inspired the 1995 Nicole Kidman movie, To Die For.

Now 52, Smart’s denied knowledge of the plot. Flynn and three other youths have since been released from prison. Smart, in prison for 30 years, “serves their sentences for crimes they committed, not her,” Pam said.