Bleach blonde murderess Pamela Smart dolls herself up for court as she begs for new trial after orchestrating her husband's murder 31%
By Emma Richter47%
7/20/2026, 7:45:52 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 18 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Authority, Framing Effect, and Ambiguity (Equivocation), with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 19.4% saturation with 161 hits. Analysis detected 1,015 faulty-reasoning hits from 831 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 41% and a BS Rank of 31% (13,230 of 19,025 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 69.50% of the article peer group.
Murderess Pamela Smart got dolled up to beg for a new trial after orchestrating the 1990 killing of her husband.
She wore her curled bleach-blonde hair down and donned a purple tank top, capri pants, and sandals during a virtual court hearing on Monday morning from the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women in New York.
The convicted felon, who stared blankly at the camera, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in 1991 after a New Hampshire jury found that she orchestrated her husband, Gregg Smart's, death.
Gregg, 24, was found fatally shot inside the couple's condo in Derry on May 1, 1990, after Pamela's underage lover and student, William 'Billy' Flynn, 15, pulled the trigger.
Flynn was released on parole in June 2015 after serving nearly 25 years for Gregg's murder, but Pamela, now 58, has remained behind bars after being convicted of being an accomplice to first-degree murder and other crimes.
In January, Pamela filed a petition for habeas corpus relief in a bid to see her conviction overturned.
In the petition, which challenges an inmate's detention, Pamela's lawyers claim several constitutional violations took place in her case, PBS News reported.
The state of New Hampshire responded with a motion to dismiss the petition, which resulted in Monday's hearing in front of Merrimack County Superior Court Judge James Kennedy.
Convicted felon Pamela Smart appeared in court virtually on Monday morning from the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women in New York as her attorneys try to get her a new trial
Smart, now 58, was convicted of being an accomplice to first-degree murder and other crimes in relation to the shooting death of her husband, Gregg Smart, 24 (pictured together)
Kennedy said he will take the matter under advisement and rule on it in 30 to 60 days, per the outlet.
Pamela's attorneys have argued that prosecutors misled the jury by providing them with inaccurate transcripts of secretly recorded conversations she had that included words that could not be heard on the recordings, the report stated.
According to her legal team, the word 'killed' in the sentence 'you had your husband killed,' and the term 'busted' in the sentence 'I'm gonna be busted' weren't audible.
Also, the word 'murder' in the sentence 'this would have been the perfect murder' was not heard, the publication reported.
During Monday's hearing, one of Pamela's lawyers, Matthew Zernhelt, pointed toward a forensic study that showed that accompanying muffled audio with transcripts makes listeners believe the written text even when it's not correct.
'Adding a transcript of language to the jurors changed their interpretation of what they believed they were hearing, how confident they were in what they believed they were hearing and how clear it was to them,' Zernhelt told the judge.
He added: 'There's no absolute truth about what's on the tapes.
Nothing decipherable is on the tapes.
But when you tell someone what they're hearing, you set this expectation ... and they will hear it.'
Her lawyers have also argued that her verdict was contaminated by the media frenzy the case attracted and faulty instructions that were given to the jury.
Pamela's underage lover, William 'Billy' Flynn (pictured in 2008), killed Gregg when he was 15.
He was released on parole in June 2015 after serving nearly 25 years for Gregg's murder
Merrimack County Superior Court Judge James Kennedy heard her attorney's argument on Monday morning in New Hampshire.
He said he will take the matter under advisement and rule on it in 30 to 60 days
According to her legal team, jurors were told they had to find that Pamela acted with premeditation, and were not instructed to consider only evidence presented at trial, the report said.
They also said that Pamela was handed a life sentence without parole, despite New Hampshire not mandating that sentence for an accomplice to a first-degree murder charge, PBS News said.
Lawyers for the state asked the petition to be dismissed after arguing that the claims brought up were already raised, or could have been on appeal and resolved by the New Hampshire Supreme Court.
Pamela has previously tried to get her sentence reduced several times before, but was never successful.
In June 2024, she released a video of her confessing to taking part in Gregg's murder.
Pamela (pictured on the stand during her trial) has previously tried to get her sentence reduced several times before, but was never successful
In it, she said that she's spent years deflecting blame about it, 'almost as if it was a coping mechanism'.
They were married for less than a year before he was killed.
Despite being convicted and sentenced in New Hampshire, Pamela was transferred to Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women in New York for unknown 'security reasons', it was previously reported.
The Daily Mail contacted Zernhelt for comment.
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