ACLU Files Amicus Brief for New Hampshire’s Sole Death Row Prisoner, Raising Concerns About Racial Disparities and Disproportionate Sentencing

On October 30, 2025, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Hampshire and the ACLU Capital Punishment Project joint­ly filed a 27-page ami­cus brief on behalf of Michael Addison, an African American man and the only remain­ing per­son under a death sen­tence in New Hampshire. Mr. Addison was con­vict­ed in 2008 of cap­i­tal mur­der for the fatal shoot­ing of a white Manchester police officer. 

The fil­ing cites find­ings from the Capital Jury Project (CJP), which show that ​“death-qual­i­fied” jurors are more puni­tive, more sup­port­ive of the death penal­ty, and more like­ly to view evi­dence as aggra­vat­ing rather than mit­i­gat­ing. This sup­ports the ACLU’s argu­ment that death qual­i­fi­ca­tion dur­ing jury selec­tion in Mr. Addison’s case cre­at­ed bias, vio­lat­ed the state’s con­sti­tu­tion, and con­tributed to unequal and racial­ly skewed case outcomes. 

The fil­ing urges the New Hampshire Supreme Court to con­sid­er evi­dence of racial bias and dis­pro­por­tion­al­i­ty in the state’s appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty. Central to the brief is the state’s 2019 repeal of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment — leg­is­la­tion that passed with broad bipar­ti­san sup­port but was not retroac­tive. The repeal mea­sure cleared both cham­bers of the leg­is­la­ture by more than a two-thirds mar­gin and became law only after law­mak­ers over­rode the governor’s veto. At the time, State Senator Melanie Levesque described the death penal­ty as ​“archa­ic, cost­ly, dis­crim­i­na­to­ry, and final.” 

Mr. Addison remains on death row because the repeal applies only to future cas­es. His attor­neys argue that exe­cut­ing Mr. Addison now would be ​“exces­sive or dis­pro­por­tion­ate to the penal­ty imposed in sim­i­lar cas­es” because no one con­vict­ed of the same crime today could receive a death sen­tence. The ACLU notes no oth­er state has exe­cut­ed a per­son after repeal­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and that allow­ing Mr. Addison’s exe­cu­tion would make New Hampshire the first to do so. 

The ACLU fur­ther con­tends that the state’s pro­por­tion­al­i­ty review process, estab­lished under the 1973 State v. Dixon deci­sion to pre­vent ​“freak­ish, wan­ton, or racial­ly biased” sen­tences, has failed in prac­tice to address racial dis­par­i­ties. Mr. Addison was sen­tenced to death for a sin­gle gun­shot that pen­e­trat­ed a police officer’s hel­met dur­ing an arrest attempt, lead­ing to the officer’s death the next day. The jury did not find that Mr. Addison ​“pur­pose­ly killed” the offi­cer but con­clud­ed he ​“pur­pose­ly inflict­ed seri­ous bod­i­ly injury which result­ed in death,” a find­ing suf­fi­cient for a cap­i­tal con­vic­tion under state law at the time. By con­trast, John Brooks, a wealthy white busi­ness­man, was con­vict­ed that same year of orches­trat­ing and par­tic­i­pat­ing in a con­tract killing, a pre­med­i­tat­ed act, yet received a life sen­tence. The brief notes that the two cas­es, tried with­in months of each oth­er, under­score con­cerns about race and socioe­co­nom­ic bias in capital sentencing. 

The New Hampshire Supreme Court has twice reviewed and reject­ed Mr. Addison’s pro­por­tion­al­i­ty chal­lenges, in 2013 and 2015, con­clud­ing that his sen­tence was ​“nei­ther exces­sive nor dis­pro­por­tion­ate.” The state attor­ney general’s office has not yet filed a response to the new brief. 

New Hampshire has not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion since 1939. However, debate over the future of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the state has resur­faced recent­ly. Several Republican leg­is­la­tors have pre-filed bills for the 2026 ses­sion seek­ing to rein­state the death penal­ty. Governor Kelly Ayotte, who served as attor­ney gen­er­al dur­ing Mr. Addison’s pros­e­cu­tion, has expressed her sup­port for its return. 

New Hampshire also does not cur­rent­ly have a death cham­ber. In 2010, the Department of Corrections esti­mat­ed that build­ing an exe­cu­tion cham­ber would cost about $1.7 mil­lion, but the leg­is­la­ture has not autho­rized funds to build it.