New Hampshire Legislature Passes Death-Penalty Repeal Bill, But More Votes Needed to Override Threatened Veto

The New Hampshire state leg­is­la­ture has vot­ed to repeal the state’s death penal­ty, but pro­po­nents of the bill cur­rent­ly lack the votes nec­es­sary to over­come a threat­ened guber­na­to­r­i­al veto. On April 26, the New Hampshire House of Representatives vot­ed 223 – 116 to pass Senate Bill 593, with 145 Democrats, 77 Republicans, and one Libertarian sup­port­ing repeal. The state sen­ate pre­vi­ous­ly approved the mea­sure 14 – 10 on March 15, with sup­port from eight Democrats and six Republicans. 

“What you’ve seen this year is an expres­sion of bipar­ti­san sup­port for repeal,” said State Rep. Renny Cushing, a co-spon­sor of the bill and a lead­ing anti-death penal­ty advo­cate. ​“New Hampshire is ready to abol­ish the death penalty.” 

Governor Chris Sununu, a Republican, has said he will veto the bill. In a state­ment issued in February and repeat­ed after the vote, Sununu said he ​“stand[s] with crime vic­tims, mem­bers of the law enforce­ment com­mu­ni­ty, and advo­cates for jus­tice in oppos­ing a repeal of the death penal­ty.” Characterizing ​“strengthen[ing] laws for crime vic­tims and their fam­i­lies” as a ​“top pri­or­i­ty” of his admin­is­tra­tion, Sununu said repeal ​“sends us in exact­ly the wrong direc­tion … There is no doubt that the most heinous crimes war­rant the death penalty.” 

Rep. Richard O’Leary, a for­mer deputy police chief in Manchester, said he vot­ed for the bill because ​“I don’t believe we have the right under any cir­cum­stances, except imme­di­ate self-defense, to take a life. Once the crim­i­nal has been sub­dued, arrest­ed, seg­re­gat­ed from soci­ety and ren­dered defense­less, I can­not see where the state has any com­pelling inter­est in exe­cut­ing him. It’s sim­ply wrong,” he said. 

Cushing, who has lost both his father and his broth­er-in-law to mur­der in unre­lat­ed inci­dents, said the bill’s sup­port­ers ‘‘are very close” to get­ting the votes nec­es­sary to over­ride the antic­i­pat­ed veto. ‘‘New Hampshire val­ues civ­il lib­er­ties, it val­ues human rights,” Cushing said. ​“New Hampshire can live with­out the death penalty.” 

New Hampshire has come close to abol­ish­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sev­er­al times. Both hous­es of the leg­is­la­ture vot­ed to repeal the death penal­ty in 2000, but Governor Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat, vetoed the bill. The state House also passed a repeal bill in 2014, which Gov. Maggie Hassan said she would sign. But the bill failed on a tie vote of 12 – 12 in the state sen­ate.

New Hampshire is the only state in New England with the death penal­ty, and has not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion since 1939. It has one pris­on­er on its death row, Michael Addison, who was sen­tenced to death for killing police offi­cer Michael Briggs. Officer Briggs’s part­ner, John Breckenridge, ini­tial­ly sup­port­ed the death sen­tence but has come to oppose cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. According to a New Hampshire Department of Corrections spokesper­son, the state has no sup­ply of drugs with which to car­ry out an exe­cu­tion. The state also has no pro­ce­dures in place for obtain­ing exe­cu­tion drugs, no pro­to­col for con­duct­ing an exe­cu­tion, and no loca­tion in which to per­form the exe­cu­tion. The leg­is­la­ture has declined to pro­vide fund­ing for a pro­posed $1.77 mil­lion lethal injection chamber.