The New Hampshire Supreme Court on Thursday reversed the second-degree murder conviction of Adam Montgomery, the man found guilty of killing his 5-year-old daughter Harmony Montgomery, in a unanimous ruling that said combining the murder charge with a separate assault charge jeopardized his right to a fair trial.
The court sent the murder charge back to the lower court for further proceedings while letting Montgomery’s other convictions — for abuse of a corpse, falsifying evidence, witness tampering and second-degree assault — stand.
Montgomery was sentenced to a minimum of 56 years in prison in 2024 after a jury convicted him of second-degree murder in the death of Harmony, whose body has never been found. Police believe the girl was killed in 2019, nearly two years before she was reported missing.
In their ruling, the justices said that combining the cases may have allowed jurors to use stronger evidence related to the assault charge to conclude, based on weaker evidence, that Montgomery killed his daughter months later.
“The combination of the charges jeopardized Montgomery’s right to a fair trial,” the court wrote.
The case has drawn widespread attention since Harmony was reported missing in late 2021. Authorities said Adam Montgomery moved his daughter’s corpse around for months before disposing of it. The abuse of a corpse conviction, which was not overturned, relates to those actions.
The New Hampshire Attorney General’s office said it was reviewing the ruling and would determine next steps in the prosecution of the murder charge.