New Hampshire Becomes 21^st State to Abolish Death Penalty

Overriding a veto by Governor Chris Sununu, the New Hampshire leg­is­la­ture has repealed the state’s death-penal­ty statute. With a 16 – 8 super­ma­jor­i­ty, the May 30, 2019 vote of the New Hampshire Senate equaled the two-thirds required to over­ride a guber­na­to­r­i­al veto. One week ear­li­er, the state House had vot­ed to over­ride with a 247 – 123 super­ma­jor­i­ty. The over­ride vote made New Hampshire the 21^st state to abol­ish cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and the ninth to do so in the last 15 years. Half of all U.S. states, includ­ing every north­east­ern state, now either have a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions or have abol­ished cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The one per­son on New Hampshire’s death row, Michael Addison, is not affect­ed by the new law, which applies only to future cases.

Rep. Renny Cushing (D – Hampton), whose father and broth­er-in-law were mur­dered in sep­a­rate inci­dents, spon­sored the bill and laud­ed the legislature’s action. ​“I think it’s impor­tant the voic­es of fam­i­ly mem­bers who oppose the death penal­ty were heard, the voic­es of law enforce­ment who rec­og­nize that the death penal­ty doesn’t work in terms of pub­lic safe­ty, and the voic­es of the peo­ple in the state that know the death penal­ty is an abhor­rent prac­tice were all heard today by the Legislature,” he said. Sen. Bob Giuda (R – Warren), a for­mer FBI agent, called the death penal­ty a ​“ghast­ly” prac­tice that was at odds with his pro-life prin­ci­ples. Voting to over­ride the veto, Giuda said: ​“I think we’re bet­ter than that. I choose to move our state for­ward to remove the death penalty.”

During the Senate debate on the over­ride, death penal­ty sup­port­ers echoed Governor Sununu’s argu­ments that the death penal­ty was nec­es­sary to sup­port police. The state’s sin­gle death sen­tence was imposed for the mur­der of Manchester police offi­cer Michael Briggs. Democratic Sen. Lou D’Allesandro, who rep­re­sents Manchester said that influ­enced his sup­port for the governor’s veto. ​“Our law enforce­ment peo­ple see this as a deter­rent,” he said. ​“I believe strong­ly we have to … sup­port them.” Sen. Sharon Carson (R – Londonderry) invoked the Addison case as grounds to uphold the veto. ​“If you think you’re pass­ing this today and Mr. Addison is still going to remain on death row, you are con­fused,” she said. ​“Mr. Addison’s sen­tence will be con­vert­ed to life in prison.”

Statistics show that the death penal­ty does not have a mea­sur­able effect on the rate at which police offi­cers are killed. Legislators who sup­port­ed repeal also cit­ed oth­er issues such as costs and dis­crim­i­na­tion among their rea­sons for over­rid­ing the governor’s veto. Sen, Melanie Levesque (D – Nashua) called the death penal­ty ​“archa­ic, cost­ly, dis­crim­i­na­to­ry, and vio­lent. This is time to end it,” she said. Sen. Harold French (R – Franklin) said, he was vot­ing to over­ride the veto ​“because this vote is about our state and about what kind of state we are all going to be a part of.”

This was the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year in which the leg­is­la­ture had vot­ed to abol­ish the death penal­ty and Governor Sununu had vetoed the attempt­ed repeal. In 2018, the Senate fell two votes short of over­rid­ing the veto. The state also came close to abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty in 2014, when a repeal bill failed on a tie vote in the Senate, and in 2000, when Governor Jeanne Shaheen vetoed an abolition bill.

(N.H. Abolishes Death Penalty, As Legislature Overturns Governor’s Veto, New Hampshire Public Radio, May 30, 2019; Holly Ramer, New Hampshire repeals death penal­ty as Senate over­rides veto, Associated Press, May 30, 2019; Ethan DeWitt, Senate over­rides Sununu end­ing death penal­ty in New Hampshire, Concord Monitor, May 30, 2019.) Read the Statement of DPIC Executive Director Robert Dunham con­cern­ing the New Hampshire over­ride vote. See Recent Legislative Activity and States With and Without the Death Penalty.