At least four proposals to be considered by the N.H. Legislature next year would bring back the state’s death penalty, which was abolished in 2019.
Rep. Douglas Trottier, R-Belmont, a deputy sheriff, said in an interview Tuesday his planned legislation would restore the death penalty for capital murder offenses, which include murdering a police officer or murder during the commission of another felony.
“We need at least a deterrent, so people will hopefully think before they commit this horrific crime,” he said.
Trottier noted the death penalty was repealed after Michael Addison was sentenced to death for fatally shooting Manchester police officer Michael Briggs in 2006.
“I’m sorry, you kill a person who protects us; it’s totally wrong,” Trottier said.
Addison, the only person on the state’s death row, has asked the N.H. Supreme Court to commute, or reduce, his sentence.
Trottier said those who are convicted of murder have ample opportunity to file criminal appeals. He said evidence in major murder cases is often overwhelming.
“I don’t want to see someone who is innocent put to death, but there is quite the process,” he said. “It’s not like if you get convicted today you are put to death tomorrow. It takes 20, 30 years.”
Modern DNA testing can help reduce wrongful convictions, Trottier added.
“In this country, and in the state of New Hampshire we do have jury trials and it is your peers who determine whether the evidence justifies a conviction or not,” he said. “Law enforcement is out there to prove a person is innocent as quickly as guilty.”
According to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, New Hampshire has executed 26 people in its history, the last coming on July 14, 1939, when Howard Long was hanged for the killing of a 10-year-old Laconia boy.
Other legislative proposals to be considered next year would allow executions for first- and second-degree murder as well as for certain felony crimes against children.
Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte said in a recent WMUR interview that she would support bringing back the death penalty.
Rep. David Meuse, D-Portsmouth, who is on the House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee, said in an interview Tuesday that as a practical matter, it would cost tens of millions of dollars just to create a process to execute someone in New Hampshire.
“In a state that basically doesn’t have enough money to fund public schools these days, coming up with the money to do that doesn’t seem to be the best way to spend money,” he said. “And, frankly, for the types of crimes we’re talking about, these people are going to stay in prison for a long, long time and maybe for the rest of their lives anyway.”
He said proposals of this type tend to be more about making a political statement than actually addressing a pressing problem. He also said the deterrent effect of the death penalty is up for debate and wrongful convictions do occur.
Legislative proposals are now in the phase where just the title of the measures have been filed, with the exact wording to be provided later.
“I’m never surprised by the things that I see filed, but I am definitely saddened that this is something that we could go back on as a state,” Meuse said. “This is not the direction we want to go in.”
In 2019, the Legislature barely mustered the two-thirds majority needed to overturn then-Gov. Chris Sununu’s veto of the bill to repeal the state’s death penalty.
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