“Being the sur­vivor of a homi­cide vic­tim has a pain for which there aren’t any words,” says New Hampshire Representative Renny Cushing (pic­tured), in the lat­est episode of the Death Penalty Information Center pod­cast, Discussions with DPIC. But “[f]illing anoth­er cof­fin doesn’t do any­thing to bring our loved ones back, it just widens the cir­cle of pain. There’s a big dif­fer­ence between jus­tice and vengeance,” he says. 

In an inter­view with DPIC Executive Director Robert Dunham, Cushing dis­cuss­es how being a fam­i­ly mem­ber of two mur­der vic­tims rad­i­cal­ly altered his life and influ­enced his work as a leg­is­la­tor and death-penal­ty abo­li­tion­ist. “[W]e have a crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem that’s a lot about win­ning and los­ing and pun­ish­ing, but not that much about truth-telling and heal­ing,” he says. ​“Often locked out from the whole dis­cus­sion is vic­tims and what their needs are.” Cushing’s father and broth­er-in-law were killed in sep­a­rate inci­dents, and his expe­ri­ence fac­ing the after­math was instru­men­tal in shap­ing New Hampshire’s path to abol­ish­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. In the inter­view, he describes his role as the spon­sor of the repeal bill, work­ing with a broad coali­tion to abol­ish the death penal­ty and bring­ing togeth­er peo­ple from across the polit­i­cal spec­trum with a vari­ety of life expe­ri­ences and per­son­al val­ues. Cushing address­es how New Hampshire repeal advo­cates chal­lenged the myths that victim’s fam­i­ly mem­bers and law enforce­ment mono­lith­i­cal­ly sup­port cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and empow­ered vic­tims and law enforce­ment voic­es to speak out against the death penal­ty. Cushing also dis­cuss­es the ways in which the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem fails vic­tims, and how he has worked to make sure vic­tims are heard, regard­less of their views on capital punishment. 

During the inter­view, Cushing spoke elo­quent­ly about the effect of his father’s mur­der on his life and the ways in which peo­ple expect­ed him to respond. He told the sto­ry of a chance encounter with a fam­i­ly friend, short­ly after the mur­der, who assumed that Cushing would want his father’s killer exe­cut­ed, despite his long­stand­ing oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty. ​“He thought that because my father was mur­dered, I had changed my posi­tion on the death penal­ty. If I had done that, that would have only giv­en over more pow­er to the killer, that would have only giv­en more pow­er to the act of mur­der, because not only would my father be tak­en from me, but so too would my val­ues,” he explained. He said his oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty imposed an addi­tion­al bur­den on him because he felt an ​“oblig­a­tion” to share views that at the time were out­side the expec­ta­tion peo­ple had for a victim’s survivor.

As a leg­is­la­tor, Cushing want­ed to ensure that vic­tims had a voice in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem and that their diverse views on crime and jus­tice were heard and respect­ed: ​“I think the most impor­tant thing that I helped do and that oth­er vic­tims’ sur­vivors helped do is change the polit­i­cal cli­mate so that peo­ple can real­ize that you can be both pro-vic­tim and anti-death penal­ty. That’s real­ly impor­tant if we’re going to have a thought­ful dis­cus­sion about pub­lic pol­i­cy in the halls of state­hous­es as well as the cour­t­hous­es in this country.”

In dis­cussing the efforts to repeal cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, Cushing spoke about bring­ing togeth­er ​“voic­es of expe­ri­ence,” includ­ing vic­tims, law enforce­ment, and death-row exonerees, and the val­ue of their sto­ries to inform the debate. He also addressed the bipar­ti­san sup­port for New Hampshire’s repeal: ​“It was through find­ing that com­mon ground and under­stand­ing and valu­ing everyone’s per­spec­tive and their rea­sons for being in the room that enabled us over two decades to build a major­i­ty that ulti­mate­ly was suc­cess­ful.” When asked about the future of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the U.S., Cushing said, ​“I think the future is that the death penal­ty is going to go away. It’s going to go the way of slav­ery, … of dis­en­fran­chise­ment of women, of seg­re­ga­tion. It’s a social evil that will be eliminated.”

Discussions with DPIC, Rep. Renny Cushing on Empowering Crime Survivors and Repealing New Hampshire’s Death Penalty, July 3, 2019. 

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