High court upholds 1st-degree murder conviction in 2016 slayings in Orange
ORANGE — The state’s highest court upheld the first-degree murder convictions of an Athol man for the October 2016 home invasion in Orange in which he and an accomplice killed an elderly couple.
Joshua Hart and his co-defendant, Brittany Smith, also of Athol, were tried separately before Franklin Superior Court juries for the murder and other charges, and found guilty in 2018.
As required by law, Hart’s convictions were automatically reviewed by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. The court affirmed the convictions in 2023 but left unresolved an erroneous instruction given by the trial judge to the jury, the Northwestern District Attorney’s Office said in a statement Friday.
Most recently, Hart sought to vacate the sentences on those grounds.
“No substantial likelihood of a miscarriage of justice stemmed from the erroneous jury instruction,” the court wrote in a Friday decision. In rejecting Hart’s claims, the court affirmed the order denying the defendant’s motion and left his life sentence intact.
On the night of Oct. 5, 2016, Smith and Hart ambushed Thomas Harty, 95, and Joanna Fisher, 77, in their Orange home, prosecutors said.
Stabbed multiple times and suffocated, Harty died that night. Fisher died five weeks later, after being thrown from her wheelchair, beaten, stabbed, slashed and suffocated.
Smith and Hart stole the couple’s car, cash and credit cards, bought cigarettes and heroin, shopped at a Worcester Walmart, and then fled the state.
They were arrested two days later in Virginia.
Brittany Smith, left, appears in at Orange District Court in Orange for her arraignment on murder and other charges on Oct. 14, 2016. (Dave Roback / The Republican)Dave Roback / The Republican
The high court heard arguments Oct. 10 from Assistant District Attorney Cynthia M. Von Flatern, chief of the DA’s Appellate Division, litigating on behalf of the state, and attorney Stephen Paul Maidman, who argued for Hart.
Hart’s and Smith’s cases were prosecuted by then Chief Trial Counsel Jeremy Bucci, who now serves as an associate justice of the Superior Court.
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