New Hampshire House About to Vote on Death Penalty Repeal

[UPDATE: The repeal bill passed the House 225 – 104 on March 12. On April 17, the Senate vot­ed 12 – 12 and then tabled the bill.] The New Hampshire House of Representatives has sched­uled a vote on repeal­ing the death penal­ty for March 12. The bill, HB 1170, would replace the death penal­ty with life in prison with­out parole for future offens­es. The bill over­whelm­ing­ly passed the House Criminal Justice and Public Works Committee in February by a vote of 14 – 3, includ­ing sup­port­ive votes from sev­er­al leg­is­la­tors who had pre­vi­ous­ly opposed repeal. Six oth­er states in the past six years have end­ed the death penalty. 

Rep. Renny Cushing, the spon­sor of the bill, said ​“The death penal­ty does not pro­tect pub­lic safe­ty, it does not shield our police offi­cers, it does not meet the needs of many fam­i­lies of mur­der vic­tims, it is not con­sis­tent with the val­ues we hear from our reli­gious leaders…those who com­mit first-degree mur­der will spend the rest of their lives in prison with no chance for parole.” A death penal­ty repeal bill passed the leg­is­la­ture in 2000, but was vetoed by the gov­er­nor. The cur­rent gov­er­nor, Maggie Hassan, oppos­es the death penal­ty. New Hampshire has not had an exe­cu­tion since 1939 and has only one per­son on death row.