Pam Smart reflects on prison, pregnancy and suicide

Pamela Smart says media attention helped land her in prison, but now her lawyers hope it will help get her out.

Smart, 38, has asked Gov. John Lynch and the Executive Council to pardon her from the life without parole sentence she received after being convicted in 1991 of convincing her teen lover and his friends to murder her husband a year earlier.

She has granted few media interviews, but invited a reporter from the Portsmouth Herald to visit last week, not as a reporter, but as a regular visitor, the Herald reported, to avoid the lengthy process for admitting media at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility.

"No paper or pen was allowed and the interview was written from memory," wrote reporter Elizabeth Dinan.

Smart's lawyers are urging her to talk publicly as her pardon request comes before the state; especially about the fact that she's serving life without parole for being an accomplice to first-degree murder while the confessed murderer, Billy Flynn, has a shorter sentence.

Smart said she has declined other requests, according to the Herald.

"She's sick of her own story, she says, adding, 'They hate me in New Hampshire,'" the paper reported.

Smart still denies involvement in the plot, but she says she regrets her affair with Flynn, who was 15 at the time.

She has argued in several rejected appeals _ and the current pardon request _ that she did not get a fair trial, in part because of the pervasive media coverage. She also maintains the sentence was too harsh.

Smart said the commutation request is largely the effort of her mother, Linda Wojas, who has made her daughter's fate her own life's work.

Because of that, Smart says she's considered suicide, several times, so her mother could bury her and have her own life back, she said.

Smart also talked about her own desire to become a mother.

The prison allows conjugal visits between married inmates and spouses, and Smart has received mailed marriage proposals. But she says she's never seriously considered them, knowing any letters or conversations might be sold to newspapers.

Sex with prison guards is the way she says she could conceive a child, insisting that's been a real option since transferring to Bedford Hills from the state prison for women in Goffstown, N.H., 12 years ago.

Smart said she decided against having a child in prison because, after one year in a prison nursery, the baby would have to live with Smart's already overburdened mother, the paper reported. Besides, Smart says, "there's no room in my head right now" for sexual relationships.

What is in her head is a battle between resignation to life behind bars and a fight to go free. She takes medication to control anxiety.

Smart has earned two masters degrees behind bars _ one in literature, the other in law. But she insists she is no model prisoner, learning from fellow inmates how to commit a host of crimes and having scrapes with inmates.

In 1996 Smart was assaulted by two inmates who, according to reports at the time, suspected her of reporting their prison affair to the jail superintendent. Smart needed plastic surgery for a fractured eye socket and had a steel plate implanted in the side of her face.

Smart recently was transferred from her inmate tutoring job to working and living with the prison's mentally ill inmates. She said she likes her new role helping the women cope with their illnesses and prison.

Meanwhile, the attorney general's office in New Hampshire has been collecting opinions on Smart's pardon request from the trial judge, prosecutors, the victim's family and prison officials. The governor and Executive Council will decide whether to hold a hearing.

Two of the five councilors, Ray Burton and Peter Spaulding, have said they oppose Smart's request.

"I think she's got two chances _ slim and none," Spaulding said.