By Patrick Cronin
The Hampton Union, Tuesday, January 11, 2005
HAMPTON – The chances of Pamela Smart receiving a pardon are slim. At least that is what two Executive Councilors are saying.
Smart, through attorney Greg Adamski of Adamski & Conti, recently asked the state to pardon her.
In the next month, the state’s attorney general’s office will start collecting opinions from the judge who oversaw the trial, the prosecutors, the victim’s family and prison officials.
Smart’s petition will then be sent to the governor and Executive Council, which will decide whether to hold a hearing on it.
Executive Councilors Raymond Burton and Peter Spaulding have already gone on the record as saying the chances of her getting a pardon are poor.
Smart is serving a life sentence for her role in the 1991 murder of her husband, Gregory Smart.
The former media coordinator at Winnacunnet High School was a newlywed when she persuaded her teen lover from Seabrook and his friends to kill her husband.
Smart is seeking a pardon because she says she didn’t get a fair trial because of the intense media attention the case generated.
She is also seeking a pardon because she says her sentence was too harsh.
While Smart received a life sentence without the chance of parole for being the mastermind of the scheme, the students involved in the murder received lesser sentences for testifying against Smart.