On April 17, the New Hampshire Senate vot­ed 12 – 12 on a bill to repeal the death penal­ty. The Senate then vot­ed to table the bill, mean­ing it could be brought up for recon­sid­er­a­tion lat­er in the leg­isla­tive ses­sion. New Hampshire has not had an exe­cu­tion since 1939 and has only 1 per­son on death row, whose sta­tus would not have been affect­ed by the bill. The bill had over­whelm­ing­ly passed the House ear­li­er, and Gov. Maggie Hassan indi­cat­ed she would have signed the bill if it passed the Senate. Senator Bob Odell, one of two Republicans who vot­ed in favor of repeal, had pre­vi­ous­ly sup­port­ed the death penal­ty, but said he could not explain an exe­cu­tion to his grand­chil­dren. Some of those who vot­ed to retain the death penal­ty were con­cerned that pas­sage might reduce the sen­tence of the one man on death row, even though the bill stat­ed it would apply only to future cas­es. In oth­er states where inmates were left on death row after repeal, none have been removed because of the repeal legislation.

(K. Seelye, ​“Measure to Repeal Death Penalty Fails by a Single Vote in New Hampshire Senate,” New York Times, April 17, 2014). See Recent Legislation and New Hampshire.

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