Kristin Smart murder: 4 ways the trial went wrong, according to Paul Flores’ appeal

The convicted killer of California college freshman Kristin Smart is arguing that errors in the trial warrant the reversal or reduction of his guilty verdict.

An appeal filed Monday, July 7, takes issue with four factors from Paul Flores’ 2022 trial, which resulted in a sentence of 25 years to life for murder.

Smart, 19, was last seen on the San Luis Obispo campus of California Polytechnic State University on Memorial Day weekend in 1996; her body has never been found. Flores, also a Cal Poly student at the time, attended the same party as Smart on the night she went missing. He was arrested after a 2020 search of his home in San Pedro.

The appeal (embedded at the bottom of this article) argues that the trial was unfair for these reasons:

• A biased juror. Juror No. 273 was allowed to remain on the panel despite the defense’s complaints about her “loud and tearful breakdown” during testimony about stains found at Flores’ father’s house.

• Testimony about alleged rapes. Two women were allowed to testify that they believed Flores had drugged and raped them. That, the appeal says, enabled the prosecutor “to argue that appellant had done the same to Smart, though no independent evidence supported this theory” and “to fashion a motive for an otherwise inexplicable crime.” Flores was convicted of first-degree murder in the commission of a rape or attempted rape.

• A statement about Smart being “roofied.” Though he had no expertise on the subject, Trevor Boelter, who had been at the party with Smart, was allowed to testify that she was behaving as if she had ingested a so-called “date rape drug.”

• Misuse of a photograph. During the closing arguments, the prosecutor displayed a photo that had been taken from Flores’ home computer: a woman with a ball gag in her mouth. The appeal claims the photo was used “for character purposes and to inflame the jurors’ passions.”

Taken together, the four alleged trial errors “caused appellant cumulative prejudice and require reversal of his conviction or reduction to second-degree murder,” the appeal argues.

The new document is a response to the state attorney general’s argument against Flores’ initial appeal, filed last year. The next step would be oral arguments.

Map: The night Kristin Smart disappeared