Overview
- The New Hampshire Supreme Court this month unanimously reversed Adam Montgomery’s second-degree murder conviction, finding that joining a stronger July assault case with a December homicide charge risked unfair prejudice against the defendant.
- State prosecutors filed a formal motion asking the court to reconsider its opinion on Wednesday, June 24, seeking to vacate the reversal and restore the murder conviction.
- The attorney general’s office says it will retry the homicide count if the court leaves the reversal in place, which would require prosecutors to redraw how they introduce contested evidence and witnesses.
- The court left intact Montgomery’s convictions for second-degree assault, falsifying physical evidence, witness tampering and abuse of a corpse, and those affirmed convictions plus a prior long firearms sentence mean he remains jailed for decades.
- The ruling hinges on what evidence is considered 'intrinsic' to a charge and on witness credibility issues in the case, a legal question that will shape how prosecutors and defense attorneys approach any retrial and how jurors may infer guilt from related conduct.