MANCHESTER, NH – A judge has agreed to continue the murder trial of Adam Montgomery because one of his attorneys has left the case.
Public Defender Robin Davis withdrew as co-counsel because she took a non-lawyer job with the New Hampshire Public Defender.
Judge Amy Messer, presiding in Hillsborough County Superior Court North on Thursday, granted the request for a continuance and set jury selection for Feb. 6, 2024, with the trial to follow after the jury is empaneled.
She also scheduled a final pre-trial hearing at 9 a.m. on Jan. 16.
Public Defender Caroline Smith filed the motion on Sept. 20, 2023, asking for the continuance so she could find new co-counsel and to enable that attorney to prepare for trial.
Defense and prosecuting attorneys met with the judge in chambers for a period of time before returning to the courtroom where Senior Assistant Attorney General Benjamin Agati said prosecutors understood the reasons for the request to delay the trial and did not object to the motion.
Montgomery is to file a waiver of his right to a speedy trial within 10 days.
Montgomery is facing trial on second-degree murder in the December 2019 death of his 5-year-old daughter, Harmony. He also is charged with falsifying physical evidence, abuse of a corpse and tampering with a witness or informant.
Harmony was unaccounted for over a period of two years before authorities learned of her disappearance in late 2021 after her mother, Crystal Sorey, who had been in and out of recovery for addiction, reported she hadn’t seen her daughter since 2019.
Montgomery denies killing his daughter and in August, when he was sentenced to 32 1/2 to 75 years in state prison on unrelated stolen gun charges, he told the judge he didn’t kill her and that he refutes “those offensive claims.”
