Pamela Smart accepts responsibility in husband's 1990 murder for first time

Pamela Smart, who is serving life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for coordinating with her teenage student to have her husband killed in 1990, has accepted responsibility in his death for the first time. 

In her latest plea for New Hampshire officials to reduce her sentence, Smart acknowledged that she previously "deflected blame" instead of recognizing her own part in the murder "because the truth of being so responsible was very difficult" for her, while giving a videotaped statement that was released Tuesday. The statement ended with a request for a meeting with New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu and the New Hampshire Executive Council, which advises the governor among other duties.

Smart, 56, was a 22-year-old high school media coordinator when she began an affair with a 15-year-old boy who later fatally shot her husband, Gregory Smart, in Derry, New Hampshire. The shooter was freed in 2015 after serving a 25-year sentence. Though Pamela Smart denied knowledge of the plot, she was convicted of being an accomplice to first-degree murder and other crimes and sentenced to life without parole.