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Coerced Confessions
Pamela Smart, 54, has admitted her guilt in connection with the murder of her husband, Greggory, after spending half of her life in prison, reports Seacoastonline.com. She was convicted of being an accomplice to murder on March 22, 1991, but has always claimed she was innocent. Her admission of guilt came as she filed a new petition seeking clemency from her life sentence without the chance of parole.
“It took years, even decades, for me to accept responsibility and I must carry that burden, alone and deservedly, for the rest of my life, recognizing that the pain and suffering I caused are irreparable,” Smart wrote in a letter to the governor and Executive Council, apologizing to Gregg Smart’s family, her family, and “all who were directly or indirectly impacted by my actions and misjudgment.”
“This burden is something I can never — and should never — be free of, because my actions have forever changed the course of many lives, including my own.”
Smart was 22 when she was accused of enlisting then-16-year-old William “Billy” Flynn, with whom she was having an affair, and three of his friends to kill her husband on May 1, 1990, and make it look like a botched burglary. Patrick “Pete” Randall, who held a knife to Greggory Smart’s face as his friend shot him in the head, was paroled on June 4, 2015. Vance Lattime, who supplied the car and the murder weapon to kill Greggory Smart, was released on parole on Aug. 8, 2015, while Raymond Fowler, who went along for the ride, was paroled in 2003. Flynn, who shot Smart execution-style, was released in 2015 after serving almost 25 years in prison.
Coerced Confessions
The New York Times recently ran an article about the number of people who are unjustly incarcerated, yet, in order to obtain parole, must confess to the crime. “People who maintain their innocence remain in an impossible situation,” said Michelle Lewin, executive director of the Parole Preparation Project.
Among the prisoners who have decided that their best option is to falsely admit guilt is Huwe Burton, who had been convicted of stabbing his mother, Keziah, to death in their Bronx apartment in 1989, when he was 16 years old. Police decided to focus on him instead of an obvious suspect — a neighbor who had a violent criminal record and who was discovered driving Keziah’s car six days after the killing.
Burton always maintained his innocence, but at a parole hearing, he dropped his claims of innocence and admitted to the stabbing because parole boards require prisoners to admit guilt before granting freedom. Julia Salazar, a Democrat from Brooklyn in the New York State Senate, has proposed a bill that would instead require parole boards to make their decisions based more on a person’s rehabilitation and risk to the community and less on their stated guilt or innocence.
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