Adam Montgomery’s Lawyers Switched Sides — and It Saved His Appeal

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brueski and Robin Drake.

**Tony Brueski** (0:10)
The New Hampshire Supreme Court unanimously reversed Adam Montgomery's second-degree murder conviction in the death of five-year-old Harmony Montgomery. Yeah, I know. Not because anyone found new evidence, not because anyone is claiming he's innocent, but because the trial court let the murder charge ride alongside a separate assault charge in front of the same jury, something that actually the defense of Adam Montgomery wanted. The Supreme Court said the stronger case contaminated the weaker one, and now guess what? He's going to get a new trial. This is a ruling about trial mechanics, and there's no one better to talk to and walk us through what happened here than Defense Attorney Extraordinaire and host of the podcast, Defense Diaries, Bob Motta, to help break all this down. I know we were both reacting to this the other day on Twitter. The Supreme Court said they're going to be trying the murder case and the assault case, obviously the assault case was tied to this, but they said, nope, it was prejudicial, prejudicial to have them next to each other, tried at the same time, even though Adam's team asked for it.
For people who don't speak courtroom, what does prejudicial actually mean?
And how, I guess, how do the mechanics of this work? Again, considering the Adam Montgomery cap is the one who wanted these combined into one trial.

**Bob Motta** (1:42)
Yeah, I mean, in plain English, prejudicial is, in the legal sense, doesn't just mean this hurts the defense, it means that every good piece of the prosecution's evidence hurts the defense. And that point of it, like legally prejudicial means the jury used evidence for a purpose that the law forbids. And propensity is what I'm talking about. And, you know, for instance, you know, he beat her in July, which we obviously had evidence of, which is why I hate that guy probably more than he defended my guy. Like in recent memory, and there's some horrific, horrific defendants we've seen in recent memory. But this guy with that adorable, beautiful little girl, you know, but him beating her in July and then turn around saying, so he's the kind of man who would have beat her to death in December. You can't do it. It goes to propensity. It's one of the things that you can't use prior bad acts for. So, you know, the law for lack of a better term is basically allergic to that. And you can't convict somebody of crime B just because they've committed crime A.
And also because he's a shitbag. So ultimately, you know, this thing landed on the fact that the charges were mis-joined. They should have been severed. They shouldn't have been tried together.
And ultimately, they were. And it was a miscalculation by both the prosecutor and the judge in the sense that they knew what evidence they were going to be presenting and that they knew what impact that would have on the jury. You know, it's like you can't show the types of injuries that Harmony sustained in the July occurrence and not expect that to bleed into the jury's mindset in terms of hating this guy, you know? And, you know, it's we refer to it as bootstrapping, you know, when you bootstrap another case onto another case in order to bolster that second case, it's just it's not allowable in the law. So as much as I hate this ruling, you know, and I do because, I mean, that piece of shit didn't even show up for his own trial. He wouldn't come out of his jail cell, but I'm sure we'll get into that. So, but yeah, that's essentially what prejudice in this context means.

**Robin Drake** (4:23)
Help me understand the arc, Bob. I, you know, because to me, again, I don't speak courtroom either.
How do you then do it because all the prior things individual did as a human being lead to who he was that actually did the even more horrendous thing of killing her? So, I mean, how do you, how do you separate those when it's all part of the whole of who he is?

**Bob Motta** (4:48)
I mean, that's the thing. Like you, what you're talking about is propensity. Like the whole of who he is, you can't use prior bad acts to show propensity. Like the dog, it's just not allowed in the law, you know.

**Robin Drake** (5:04)
Don't we see that at the places, though?

**Bob Motta** (5:06)
I mean, not if they can avoid it, you know. I hear what you're saying. I hear what you're saying.

**Tony Brueski** (5:12)
Like, here's an example just to try and throw in it. Like, OK, so Corey Richens case, the sandwich beforehand, you know, they're like, oh, he got sick and he survived.