1 case tagged “televised trial”
Convicted: Pamela Ann Smart
On the night of May 1, 1990, Gregg Smart came home to his condominium in Derry, New Hampshire, and found two teenagers waiting in the dark. One pressed a .38-caliber pistol to his head and fired. Gregg was 24 years old. His wife, Pamela, had arranged to be elsewhere. She was 22, a media director for a school district, and the woman who had seduced 15-year-old student Billy Flynn and, prosecutors argued, steered him toward murder to avoid a costly divorce and collect $140,000 in life insurance. When Pamela's own friend put on a police wire and recorded her coaching a witness to lie, the case cracked open like a fault line. What followed was the first murder trial in American history broadcast live on television, gavel to gavel, drawing roughly 150 reporters from around the world and turning a quiet New Hampshire courthouse into a global theater. Pamela Smart sat at the defense table and showed no emotion when the jury came back. She has been in prison ever since, more than three decades now, still filing petitions, still insisting the system failed her. The teenagers who pulled the trigger have all been paroled and gone home. She has not.
