Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 21, 1991 TAG: 9103210076
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: EXETER, N.H. LENGTH: Medium
But Pamela Smart's attorney told the jury that she was far from lacking in feeling.
"Listen to that 911 tape, you think she couldn't cry?" attorney Paul Twomey said, referring to a call made after the slaying. "She was hysterical. She was crying."
The closing arguments followed Smart 11 days of testimony at the trial of the 23-year-old Smart, who is charged with conspiracy and being an accomplice in her husband's slaying last May.
The Rockingham County Superior Court jury began deliberations Wednesday afternoon and recessed until today after 2 1/2 hours.
The triggerman, 17-year-old William Flynn, told of being tantalized and seduced by his teacher, then coerced emotionally into killing her husband so she wouldn't be left empty-handed in a divorce.
"Witness after witness got up here and talked about a bullet being put through her husband's head," prosecutor Paul Maggiotto said. Smart, he said, showed "not one tear of remorse and not a tear of grief."
The defense called Flynn and two confessed accomplices "thrill-killers" who murdered Gregory Smart on their own, then framed his widow to avoid life prison terms. In plea bargains, they face minimum prison terms of 18 to 28 years.
Pamela Smart met the three when they were in video projects and other programs she ran at Winnacunnet High School in Hampton.
Maggiotto urged jurors to recall tapes in which Smart said she knew beforehand that her husband would be killed.
He also cited an excerpt in which Smart said she expected Vance Lattime, the confessed getaway driver, eventually to confess, but that her word would be taken over his because of her "professional reputation."
"This woman has counted on . . . her background, her intelligence, her ability to answer questions . . . [to] pull one over on you," Maggiotto told jurors. "Don't let her do it."
Unable to get information from police and embarrased over her affair with Flynn, Smart explained the tapes by saying she was pretending to know more about the murder in hopes of learning more from her student intern.
Twomey pointed to discrepancies in stories told by Flynn and his accomplices about the killing, in which they shot Gregory Smart in the back of the head.
Flynn and Patrick Randall, also 17, said only that they were inside the Smarts' condominium. Both denied taking off Smart's wedding ring.
The inconsistencies show that the three boys lied, just as they lied when they said Pamela Smart put them up to it, Twomey said.
by CNB