Adam Montgomery, the father sentenced to more than 50 years in prison for killing his 5-year-old daughter, Harmony Montgomery, is asking the New Hampshire Supreme Court to overturn his murder conviction, alleging his trial was unfair.
Montgomery was convicted last year of beating his daughter to death and hiding her body. Police believe he killed Harmony while they were living in a car in Manchester in 2019, nearly two years before she was reported missing. Her body has never been found.
Montgomery’s attorney, Pamela Pheland, said the lower court erred when it allowed the jury to view “prior bad act” evidence of him having assaulted and neglected Harmony before her death. While the court found this evidence relevant to the murder, Pheland argued it was not connected closely enough and instead created unfair prejudice against Montgomery.
Justice Melissa Countway challenged that claim, asking whether the evidence from the weeks and months leading up to the murder could’ve been an indicator of Montgomery’s “extreme indifference” to Harmony’s life.
Pheland responded: “I believe the [homicide] charge itself shows extreme indifference.”
She argued prosecutors may have used the “prior bad act” evidence connected to an earlier assault charge to fill a “gap” in their case. Similarly, the appeal also takes issue with the judge’s decision to combine the earlier assault charge with the homicide charge into one trial.
Sam Gonyea, an assistant attorney general, told justices that the “overwhelming strength” of the state’s case canceled out any risk of prejudice from that evidence. The jury had a right to hear the context of the weeks and months leading up to Harmony’s death, he said.
“This murder did not happen in a vacuum,” Gonyea said. “The whole story is not told by simply recounting the events of Dec. 7, 2019.”
Attorneys also battled over the testimony of Kayla Montgomery, Harmony’s stepmother; Pheland argued that the state relied too heavily on her as a witness.
