Attorney Mark Sisti continues in his quest to reduce Pam Smart’s sentence, this time before the N.H. Supreme Court.. 

By RAY DUCKLER

Monitor columnist

Published: 02-15-2023 7:13 PM

Mark Sisti senses that the public and state officials roll their eyes each time the Chichester attorney seeks a hearing before the Executive Council to show why Pam Smart’s life-without-parole sentence should be reduced.

Sisti went to bat for Smart again on Tuesday, this time in front of the New Hampshire Supreme Court, the first time he’s stated his case before the state’s highest court. Sisti has failed in his other three attempts – the most recent was last year – to persuade the Executive Council to grant Smart a hearing, hoping for a shorter sentence. She’s one step away from that.

The Supreme Court will announce its decision in the coming weeks.

Smart, the former media coordinator at Winnacunnet High School, was convicted of masterminding a plot to kill her husband, Gregg Smart, by manipulating four teenage students, which would have allowed her to continue her relationship with her 15-year-old lover, Billy Flynn.

The case – with a love triangle, the defendant’s affair with one of her underage students, and murder – sparked worldwide attention as the national and international media visited the Granite State to watch the trial unfold.

As the mastermind, Smart was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole. Sisti has maintained that the state's five-member Executive Council have not taken Smart’s petition for a commutation hearing seriously. He also signaled compassion for those serving a life sentence saying, “We’re not going to have them languish in prison to die without hope.”

Smart has exhausted all of her appeal options and now has to ask the governor and council to reconsider her sentence. 

The judges questioned Sisti, wondering how he knew that the Executive Council had not made an honest attempt to research and ask questions. Sisti said the time he spent explaining his case to the council at a past meeting was fast. Too fast.

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“It was brushed aside so quickly,” Sisti told the court. “If you look at that transcript, that hearing was over in 44 seconds.”

Sisti wants a panel to hear Smart’s legal argument and work freely, without intimidation, from a large portion of the public who disdain her.

“We have to break the chain of politics,” Sisti told the court. “The only way Pam Smart can do that is to come before a panel that isn’t burdened with politics.” 

While Smart was scorned by the public right up until the day she went to prison, she’s turned things around, her supporters say. Friends and family, including her mother, Linda Wojas, often contacted media outlets through the decades, looking to promote and inform anyone who’d listen that her daughter was accomplishing amazing things behind bars.

“Based on everything they’ve read, people think she’s guilty,” Wojas said 3½ years ago near her home in the Lakes Region. “Did she ask those kids to do it? There’s nothing in her character that would lead her to do this.”

Wojas looked haggard that day, after lobbying for decades for a commutation, or a pardon, or anything positive. She said she was losing hope.

For years now, Sisti’s ace in the hole was Smart’s two Master’s degrees that she earned in prison. She also collected many letters from inmates who vouched for her character and appreciated her effort in mentoring some of them like a teacher.

Sisti’s message was twofold, saying that after 32 years in prison, where Smart was hit in the face so hard that she needed facial reconstruction, she had paid her debts, and her educational background would serve society well.

Others think she’s still a master manipulator, saying her apology to her husband’s family last year after more than three decades was nothing more than her attempt to play a get-out-of-jail card. 

Assistant Attorney General Laura Lombardi peppered the judges with rapid-fire statements, urging them to reject Smart’s request. She wondered if the Supreme Court even had jurisdiction to pass the case back to the Executive Council. 

“He uses the phrase ‘due process’ over and over,” Lombardi said, referring to Sisti. “There is no due process at issue in this case. This is a matter of mercy and grace held by the executive branch.”

Countered Sisti: “What’s really going on here is that the state is adv ocating for a long, painful extermination of a New Hampshire citizen.”

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