Overview:
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has upheld the first-degree murder conviction of Joshua Hart for the 2016 home invasion that resulted in the deaths of an elderly Orange couple. Hart and Brittany Smith were convicted of multiple charges, and are serving life sentences in state prison. The court rejected Hart's claims that his convictions should be vacated due to legal inconsistency, leaving his life sentence intact. .
BOSTON — The state’s highest court has once again upheld the first-degree murder convictions of a former Athol man in connection with the 2016 home invasion that left an elderly Orange couple dead.
Joshua Hart and co-defendant Brittany Smith were convicted of murdering Thomas Harty and Joanna Fisher two years after the crime and are serving life sentences in state prison. Hart’s convictions were automatically reviewed by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, as is required in such cases, and his convictions were affirmed in 2023, though the court left unresolved the issue of an erroneous jury instruction given by the trial judge. Hart then filed a motion in Superior Court to vacate his convictions, but that trial judge denied it in what the SJC later described as a “thorough, well-reasoned opinion.”
Donald Harty, son of victim Thomas Harty, said he and his family are pleased with the decision.
“I just feel good. Based on all the different hearings that we went to, we expected that to happen,” he said in an interview Tuesday. “You could almost see [the SJC justices’] eyes rolling a little — that it was not a real rational argument that [Hart’s] attorney was making.”
Hart and Smith, his then-girlfriend, were convicted of crimes connected to the Oct. 5, 2016, home invasion at 581 East River St. in Orange that resulted in the death of Thomas Harty, 95, and Fisher, his second wife. Fisher, 77, died from her injuries the following month.
Hart was convicted of the seven charges against him: the two murders; the attempted murder of Fisher; two counts of armed robbery; and single counts of larceny of a motor vehicle and fraudulent use of credit cards. While Smith’s attempted murder charge was dropped after Fisher died, that did not happen for Hart. His attorney, Stephen Paul Maidman, argued in front of the SJC justices that this warranted Hart’s first-degree and attempted murder convictions being vacated due to legal inconsistency.
In a decision issued on Dec. 26, the SJC rejected Hart’s claims, concluding, “No substantial likelihood of a miscarriage of justice stemmed from the erroneous jury instruction.” The court affirmed the order denying the defendant’s motion to vacate his convictions of murder in the first degree and attempted murder, leaving his life sentence intact.
Attempts to contact Maidman this week were unsuccessful. Assistant District Attorney Cynthia Von Flatern argued against Hart’s motion.
Janice Lanou, one of Thomas Harty’s daughters, wrote in an email that the SJC’s decision was a relief to her and her family.
“We are … grateful that our judicial system worked as it should,” she wrote.
Hart and Smith wanted to steal Harty and Fisher’s vehicle to flee the state because they had been arrested on car theft charges days earlier. Hart, who had warrants in his home state of Pennsylvania, wanted to avoid jail, and Smith, who was addicted to heroin, did not want to go to drug treatment. The two targeted a home in Orange with an older model vehicle that lacked tracking technology. Harty and Fisher owned a Toyota Matrix.
Hart and Smith armed themselves with at least one knife and a wrench, entered the victims’ home through a door off the garage and began attacking the elderly couple, who were watching television. Both victims were beaten and stabbed during the home invasion.
Fisher, who used a wheelchair due to partial paralysis from a 2013 spinal stroke, later told authorities she was struck in the head with a hard object and thrown to the ground in the assault. She said her female attacker, eventually identified as Smith, stabbed her multiple times and tried unsuccessfully to fatally slit her throat before asking the male attacker, eventually identified as Hart, for help suffocating her. Hart stood on her chest in an attempt to force the air out of her lungs. This, however, also failed to kill Fisher, though Harty was suffocated with a pillow.
The two perpetrators ransacked the home in search of cash after the attack and then fled, taking the victims’ credit and debit cards and the car keys. After the attackers left, Fisher crawled to attempt to call for help, but learned Hart and Smith had disabled the house phone and had stolen her husband’s cellphone. A Catholic Charities nurse called the authorities after finding Fisher. Fisher described to police the appearance of her attackers before she was airlifted to UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester.
A card stolen from Fisher was used to make a debit transaction at a Worcester-area Walmart within hours of the attackers fleeing. They were seen on video surveillance, and officers involved in the investigation recognized the man and woman as Hart and Smith, who also matched Fisher’s description. Hart and Smith were arrested by the Rockbridge County Sheriff’s Department in Virginia when Rockbridge Sgt. Scottie Sorrells found the suspects in a U-Haul truck at the Rockbridge County Walmart and took them into custody for being fugitives from justice on vehicle larceny warrants out of Massachusetts.
Donald Harty, who lives in Maine, said Hart’s appeal reopened a wound for his family.
“You never get closure. You never get over it,” he said, adding that he does not believe this latest decision by the SJC permanently closes the door on the case. “We hope nothing else comes up, but I don’t bank on it.”
The younger Harty mentioned his father, an avid hiker who was three weeks short of his 96th birthday and was working part-time as a salesman when he was killed, had always predicted he would die at 106. He would have turned 105 this past October.
Years after the double homicide, the younger Harty managed to retrieve his father’s boots, which had been taken as evidence by the Northwestern District Attorney’s Office because Thomas Harty was wearing them when he was killed. The elder Harty had been planning another trip to the Grand Canyon in Arizona, and the younger Harty has continued to hike in them to keep alive his father’s memory.
Donald Harty also said that on Jan. 12 he will wear the boots to hike to the top of the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, following arrangements made by U.S. Sen. Susan Collins. The younger Harty also plans to use the boots on a final trip to the Grand Canyon in October, where he intends to bury them.