Adam Montgomery: 5 things to know as New Hampshire Supreme Court overturns murder conviction in Harmony's killing
The New Hampshire Supreme Court on Thursday overturned Adam Montgomery’s second-degree murder conviction in the 2019 killing of his five-year-old daughter, Harmony Montgomery, ruling that he was denied a fair trial.
Montgomery had been convicted in 2024 and sentenced to 56 years to life in prison for the murder of Harmony, whose body has never been found. Harmony was last seen by her birth mother in April 2019 but her disappearance went unreported until 2021, a gap that later sparked calls for reform at child welfare agencies across New Hampshire and Massachusetts, according to BREAKING NEWS.
The court upheld Montgomery’s other convictions, including falsifying physical evidence, witness tampering, abuse of a corpse and assault.
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5 things to know about Supreme Court’s decision and why this happened
- The Supreme Court found that the assault charge and murder charge should never have been tried together. Joining the two in a single case, justices ruled, denied Montgomery a fair trial.
- Despite the ruling, Montgomery is not walking free, he is currently serving a separate 32 and half-year sentence on unrelated gun charges.
- The state had argued that combining the charges was harmless because the evidence against Montgomery was overwhelming but justices disagreed, writing: “We conclude that the misjoinder of offenses was not harmless as to the homicide charge. Accordingly, we reverse the defendant’s conviction of second-degree murder.”
- Former Assistant Attorney General Jesse O’Neill explained the issue, per WMUR: “The jurors could have improperly relied on the strength of that charge to bolster the way that they looked at Adam with respect to the murder charge, where the only real evidence that he was the one who killed Harmony was the testimony of Kayla Montgomery.”
- Former Manchester Police Chief Allen Aldenberg told WMUR he hopes prosecutors move to retry the case: “I’m hopeful and I’m confident that they’re going to retry him for the murder of a little girl that would have been 12 this month. Everybody needs to take a deep breath, digest this, and I would hope that the attorney general is going to retry him for the murder of this little girl.”
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O’Neill, while calling the ruling tough, defended the court’s role, per WMUR: “It was a tough decision to read, but it’s the job of our courts, specifically our Supreme Court, to make sure things are done right, and fairness is maintained. So, while I would have liked to see the murder conviction stand, the Supreme Court determined that things should have been done differently, and that’s their role to make that decision.”
Adam Montgomery: 5 things to know
- Montgomery was born to troubled teenage parents. He had a personal and family history of abuse and incarceration.
- Montgomery had been arrested for violent crimes in the past.
- He lived in Bedford, New Hampshire. A neighbor from that time had told The Boston Globe ‘he has a black soul’. Montgomery was prosecuted for menacing her with a knife in 2007, when he was 17.
- Montgomery had Harmony with Crystal Sorey, who then lost custody due to substance abuse. After Harmony was killed with repeated punches to her head, he reportedly encouraged estranged wife Kayla to lie about her whereabouts.
- When Harmony was born in 2014, Montgomery was incarcerated and awaiting trial after he was charged with shooting a man in the head during a drug deal.
Why did Adam Montgomery appeal his conviction?
The New Hampshire Supreme Court heard Adam Montgomery’s appeal in October. During the hearing, his attorney, Pamela Phelan, argued that the assault charge should not have been tried together with the murder charge.
The assault charge was linked to an incident in July 2019, while the murder charge was related to Harmony Montgomery’s alleged death on December 7, 2019. The defense argued that prosecutors used the assault allegations to show a broader pattern of abuse. They asked the court to separate the two cases but that request was denied.
The defense also argued that the court should not have allowed evidence of other alleged “bad acts.” This included claims that Adam Montgomery assaulted and neglected Harmony in the weeks before her death and prevented her mother, Crystal Corey, from seeing her daughter to hide that abuse.