Adam Montgomery, a New Hampshire man who was convicted of second-degree murder in the death of his daughter Harmony, has filed an appeal in New Hampshire Supreme Court.
Investigators believe Harmony was killed nearly two years before she was reported missing in 2021. Her body has never found.
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Adam Montgomery was sentenced to 45 years to life for murder and a minimum total of 11 more years — all to be served consecutively — for charges of falsifying evidence, tampering with a witness and second-degree assault. He received a suspended sentence of one year for the abuse of a corpse charge.
In an appeal filed in New Hampshire Supreme Court, Adam Montgomery's defense took issue with several aspects of the trial.
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The first concerns the combining of the assault case with the murder case. According to court filings, the defense believed the assault charges, tied to an incident in July 2019, would be approached separately from the murder charge, which alleged events on Dec. 7, 2019. However, the defense says the prosecution used the assault cause to establish a larger pattern of abuse. During the trial, the defense requested the cases be severed, but that request was denied.
This is tied to a larger defense argument that the court should not have admitted "bad acts" evidence - evidence that Adam Montgomery assaulted and neglected Harmony in the two weeks leading up to her death, and that he prevented her mother, Crystal Corey, from seeing her daughter to cover up that abuse.
While the evidence may have been part of Sorey’s story, that circumstance does not make the evidence admissible. The disputed evidence was not necessary or essential for the jury to realistically evaluate the evidence about what happened to H.M. on and after December 7, 2019," the appeal reads.
Another concerns testimony by Kayla Montgomery, Adam Montgomery's wife and Harmony's stepmother.
Kayla Montgomery, was issued an 18-month prison sentence after pleading guilty to perjury charges related to the investigation into the child’s disappearance, testified that her husband killed Harmony on Dec. 7, 2019, while the family lived in their car after being evicted from their home.
Kayla Montgomery testified that her husband repeatedly punched Harmony in the face and head because he was angry that she was having bathroom accidents in the car.
In the appeal the defense argues there were "credibility issues" with Kayla Montgomery's testimony and that it shouldn't have been admitted. They argue that her story changed multiple times over the course of the investigation and that she had a "a history of dishonestly and misplaced trust."
The final point concerns body camera footage presented at the trial. The video showed an encounter between Adam Montgomery and police officers on Dec. 31. 2021. The judge did not admit the audio from the encounter. The defense argues that showing the video without the audio unfairly prejudiced the jury.
Harmony Montgomery's body was never found. Investigators believe Harmony's remains are somewhere along a 26-mile route that Adam Montgomery took with a rental truck into Massachusetts.
