Pamela Smart Receives $23K Payday

HAMPTON — Pamela Smart, who is serving a life sentence for recruiting her then-teenage lover from Seabrook to kill her husband, just received a $23,875 payday from the state of New York.

U.S. District Court Judge Robert Sweet approved a settlement agreement Monday, Nov. 2 to end Smart’s 2006 civil federal lawsuit against the state of New York.

Smart, who is currently imprisoned at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in New York, sued the state claiming unfair treatment by prison officials after scantily clad photos of her in a cell appeared in the National Enquirer.

In the suit, she alleges that after the photos appeared in the supermarket tabloid, she was forced to spend two months in a 23-hour-a-day lock-down facility.

Smart, 42, claims the pictures were taken by a guard who sexually assaulted her.

The New York attorney general’s office as well as Smart’s attorney Nicholas Booke has been working to settle the case since December of 2008.

As part of the settlement, Smart will receive $8,750, while her attorney will receive the remaining balance for attorney fees.

The money awarded to Smart will be delivered to the correctional facility and deposited in her inmate facility/departmental account.

The agreement signed by both parties stipulates the settlement should not be construed as an admission or acknowledgment of liability whatsoever by any of the defendants or the New York State Department of Correctional Services regarding any of the allegations made by Smart in her complaint.

Smart is serving life sentence after being convicted in 1991 for enlisting William Flynn of Seabrook to kill her husband, Gregory, in the couple’s Derry condominium. Flynn was a 16-year-old student at Winnacunnet High School when he met Smart, who was the media coordinator for School Administrative Unit 21.

Flynn testified he and Smart had carried on a sexual relationship for several months, and she finally persuaded him to kill her husband by indicating it was the only way the two could be together. He carried out the murder with the aid of three other Seabrook youths.

Meanwhile, Smart recently lost her appeal in another case she brought against the Bedford Hills Correction Facility claiming prison officials should be held liable in the jailhouse beating that left her bruised and battered.

A lower court dismissed her claims and, in a decision released on Sept. 22, so did the state’s Court of Appeals.

According to Hampton Union archives, Smart was brutally attacked outside a prison school building by two inmates who reportedly believed she had revealed an affair the two women had in letters to the prison superintendent.