Veto-Proof Majority of New Hampshire House Votes to Repeal State’s Death Penalty

By an over­whelm­ing 279 – 88 mar­gin, a veto-proof major­i­ty of the New Hampshire House of Representatives vot­ed on March 7, 2019 to repeal the state’s death penal­ty. Demonstrating strong bipar­ti­san sup­port that gar­nered the back­ing of 56 more leg­is­la­tors than an iden­ti­cal repeal bill received in April 2018, the vote end­ed spec­u­la­tion as to how the recon­sti­tut­ed cham­ber would respond to repeal. 93 of the 400 rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the state house who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the vote in 2018 did not seek reelec­tion, and more than one-third of the rep­re­sen­ta­tives had nev­er before vot­ed on a death-penal­ty issue. The bill now advances to the State Senate, where 16 of the 30 sen­a­tors elect­ed in November 2018 have said they sup­port repeal, also a veto-proof major­i­ty. A death penal­ty repeal bill has been con­sid­ered by the Granite State’s law­mak­ers every ses­sion over the last two decades and was passed by the state’s House and Senate in April 2018. However, Governor Sununu vetoed that bill in June, and the Senate fell two votes shy of the two-thirds super­ma­jor­i­ty need­ed to over­ride the veto.

More than 100 wit­ness­es tes­ti­fied at pub­lic hear­ings con­duct­ed by the House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee in February, with more than 90 advo­cat­ing for repeal. Representative Renny Cushing, the committee’s chair­man and the prime spon­sor of the bill, said, ​“We had a very pow­er­ful, pub­lic hear­ing … with all the rea­sons to oppose the death penal­ty pre­sent­ed in a real­ly clear fash­ion.” Cushing, whose father and broth­er-in-law were mur­dered in two dif­fer­ent inci­dents, has been a death-penal­ty abo­li­tion­ist for more than two decades. The death penal­ty ​“does noth­ing to bring back our loved ones,” he said. ​“All it does is widen the cir­cle of vio­lence.” Republican Representative David Welch, who sup­port­ed the death penal­ty in the last 16 leg­isla­tive ses­sions, said his wife’s recent death made him rethink cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. ​“The grief I’ve expe­ri­enced since then has been hor­ri­ble and it has not dimin­ished,” he said. ​“An inmate on death row has loved ones that care for him in spite of what he has done. The victim’s fam­i­ly goes through grief sim­i­lar to what I went through. When that inmate is put to death, there’s anoth­er fam­i­ly going through that grief. Both fam­i­lies are inno­cent, and they both went through the same thing.” Freshman Democratic Representative Safiya Wazir, whose fam­i­ly fled Afghanistan when she was a child, argued that the United States should not be among the ​“ter­ri­ble list of states that use the death penal­ty” – like Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. Discussing the state’s ​“Live Free or Die” mot­to, she said, ​“Let’s put the empha­sis on liv­ing. New Hampshire is bet­ter than this.”

The prospec­tive repeal bill would not affect the only pris­on­er cur­rent­ly on New Hampshire’s death row, Michael Addison. The state has not exe­cut­ed any­one since 1939.

(Mike Cronin, Death penal­ty repeal bill pass­es NH House with veto-proof major­i­ty, WMUR, March 7, 2019; Ethan DeWitt, With new argu­ments, death penal­ty repeal again pass­es N.H. House, Concord Monitor, March 7, 2019; Dave Solomon, NH House pass­es death penal­ty repeal by a veto-proof mar­gin, New Hampshire Union Leader, March 7, 2019.) See Recent Legislative Activity.