CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — The New Hampshire Supreme Court docket on Thursday reversed a homicide conviction for a person accused of killing his 5-year-old daughter and shifting her corpse round for months earlier than disposing of it.
Although her physique has by no means been discovered, police consider Concord Montgomery was killed in 2019, practically two years earlier than she was reported lacking. Her father, Adam Montgomery was sentenced to a minimal of 56 years in jail in 2024 after being convicted of second-degree homicide, abuse of a corpse, falsifying proof, witness tampering and assault.
The Supreme Court docket, nonetheless, reversed probably the most critical cost, agreeing with Montgomery that the lesser assault cost ought to have been prosecuted individually. It despatched the second-degree homicide cost again to the decrease courtroom whereas letting the opposite convictions stand.
Of their unanimous ruling, justices stated combining the instances jeopardized Montgomery’s proper to a good trial as a result of jurors might have used the stronger proof in regards to the assault to conclude primarily based on weaker proof that he killed her months later.
“There was a big threat that the jury would draw the impermissible inference that as a result of the defendant assaulted the sufferer earlier than by putting her within the head, he should be the one who fatally assaulted her in December by once more putting her within the head.”
The second-degree homicide conviction accounts for 45 years of Montgomery’s 56-years-to-life sentence, which was imposed on high of an earlier 32 ½-year sentence he already was serving on unrelated gun costs.
The legal professional normal’s workplace didn’t reply to a request for remark Thursday on whether or not it plans to re-try him on the homicide cost. Emails additionally have been despatched to Montgomery’s legal professional.