New Hampshire Supreme Court Overturns Murder Conviction in High-Profile Case
The New Hampshire Supreme Court has overturned the murder conviction of Adam Montgomery, who was accused of killing his 5-year-old daughter, Harmony Montgomery, and concealing her body for months. The court’s decision was announced on Thursday, raising questions about the handling of the initial trial.
Harmony Montgomery was believed to have been killed in 2019, although her body has never been discovered. Adam Montgomery was sentenced in 2024 to a minimum of 56 years in prison after being found guilty of second-degree murder, corpse abuse, evidence tampering, witness tampering, and assault. A detailed report on the case can be found here.
The Supreme Court unanimously decided to reverse the second-degree murder conviction, agreeing with Montgomery’s argument that the assault charge should have been tried separately. The court has remanded the murder charge back to the lower court while maintaining the other convictions.
In their ruling, the justices expressed concern that combining the charges compromised Montgomery’s right to a fair trial. “There was a significant risk that the jury would draw the impermissible inference that because the defendant assaulted the victim before by striking her in the head, he must be the one who fatally assaulted her in December by again striking her in the head,” the justices stated.
The overturned murder conviction accounted for 45 years of Montgomery’s sentence, which was in addition to a 32 ½-year sentence for unrelated gun charges. The attorney general’s office confirmed plans to seek a retrial for the second-degree murder charge, with spokesperson Michael Garrity stating, “We remain confident in the facts of this case, the evidence presented, and the exceptional work of our prosecutors, investigators, and law enforcement partners.”
Efforts to reach Montgomery’s attorneys for comment were unsuccessful.
Last year, the state settled a lawsuit with Harmony Montgomery’s mother, Crystal Sorey, for $2.25 million. The lawsuit claimed that social workers failed to act on warnings that Harmony was being mistreated by her father after he gained custody in early 2019. Sorey reported Harmony missing in 2021, and authorities declared her presumed dead in 2022.
During the February 2022 trial, Adam Montgomery did not appear, and his defense did not call any witnesses. His legal team admitted to charges of evidence tampering and corpse abuse but denied that he was responsible for Harmony’s death, suggesting instead that she may have died while in the care of her stepmother, Kayla Montgomery. Further details about the trial are available here.
Kayla Montgomery served as a key witness for the prosecution, testifying that Adam Montgomery killed Harmony on December 7, 2019, in a fit of anger over her bathroom accidents while they were living in a car. She described how he disposed of Harmony’s body in various locations, including a trunk, a shelter vent, and a workplace freezer, before finally disposing of it in March 2020. More information about her testimony can be found here.
Kayla Montgomery also testified about her attempts to prevent the assault and her fear of Adam, who she claimed also physically abused her.
