Just hours after a judge ordered that a death sen­tence hand­ed down in fed­er­al court in Massachusetts be car­ried out in New Hampshire, the N.H. House Democratic Leader, Peter Burling, said the state should renew its con­sid­er­a­tion of leg­is­la­tion to repeal the death penal­ty. ​“I think the issue is so pro­found­ly divi­sive and so com­plete­ly found­ed on peo­ple’s core val­ues that there be some response,” said Burling. ​“I think most of us believed we’d nev­er see an exe­cu­tion in New Hampshire. It’s easy to become com­pla­cent.” New Hampshire has not had an exe­cu­tion since 1939, and the state does not have any­one on its death row. But fed­er­al Judge Mark Wolf recent­ly ordered that Gary Sampson’s exe­cu­tion be con­duct­ed in New Hampshire. The case was tried in Massachusetts, but since that state does not have the death penal­ty, the judge was required to pick an alter­na­tive state for the exe­cu­tion, and he chose New Hampshire. In 2002, N.H. leg­is­la­tors vot­ed to repeal cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, but then Governor Jeanne Shaheen vetoed the mea­sure. This year, law­mak­ers are already con­sid­er­ing leg­is­la­tion to lim­it the state’s death penal­ty by ban­ning the exe­cu­tion of juve­nile offend­ers. (Boston Globe, January 30, 2004) See New Hampshire. See Federal Death Penalty.

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