"Lawmakers push to repeal death penalty in NH," is the AP report in Foster's Daily Democrat. It's written by Travis Andersen.
Democratic state Rep. Steven Lindsey, the bill's sponsor, called the death penalty a form of frontier justice during a hearing Tuesday before the House Public Safety Committee.
"We are not Texas, we're New Hampshire," Lindsey said. "We're a wholesome place."
Michael Addison was sentenced to death in December for the 2006 killing of Manchester Police Officer Michael Briggs. No execution date has been scheduled because Addison is appealing the sentence.
Manchester Police Chief David Mara called life sentences for cop-killers insufficient.
"They have the stature of a rock star in there," Mara said.
Previous efforts to repeal the death penalty have failed, however.
A repeal bill passed by the House and Senate in 2000 was vetoed by then-Gov. Jeanne Shaheen. A similar bill failed last year by 12 votes in the House, and Gov. John Lynch opposes a repeal.
Attorney General Kelly Ayotte, who opposes the measure, told the committee repealing the death penalty would threaten public safety and noted that New Hampshire's law has more restrictions than any state that allows capital punishment.
New Hampshire allows capital punishment for six types of crimes, including the murder of a police officer.
Death penalty opponents questioned the fairness of capital punishment, especially after millionaire John Brooks, who is white, received a life sentence in November for hiring others to kill a Derry repairman. Addison, who is black, could not afford private counsel.
And:
The U.S. Supreme Court halted executions in 1972 and lifted the ban four years later. Of the 36 states that allow capital punishment, only New Hampshire and Kansas have had no executions since 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C.
Other New Hampshire death penalty bills this session include a proposal to halt executions while a commission studies state policy on the matter, as well as a bill to allow death by firing squad in certain cases. Another bill would require the state to recommend life sentences for all defendants pleading guilty in capital cases.
"Death penalty law faces change," is Margot Sanger-Katz' report for the Concord Monitor.
Two months after a New Hampshire jury sentenced a man to death for the first time in nearly 50 years, legislators are considering a host of bills to repeal, pause or study the death penalty in New Hampshire.
Yesterday, lawyers, crime victims and religious figures testified before the House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee on four bills that would change the state's approach to capital punishment. In a series of hearings that stretched into the early evening, death penalty opponents called on religious and moral convictions, harnessed financial arguments and shared moving personal anecdotes in support of their argument for study and repeal.
"We are not gods. We do not have that right. We do not have that perfection," said Democratic Keene Rep. Steve Lindsey, the sponsor of a bill to repeal the death penalty.
Two of the bills considered by the committee yesterday would set up a commission to study the death penalty, although one would put any executions on hold for three years while the commission does its work. A third bill would require the attorney general to sentence capital murder defendants to life in prison if they plead guilty. A fourth would repeal the death penalty altogether. Another bill related to the death penalty, which would expand the punishment to all shooting murders and change the method of execution from lethal injection to firing squad, was not discussed yesterday.
And:
Barbara Keshen, the director of the New Hampshire Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty and a former murder prosecutor and public defender, brought the committee a dog-eared yellow newspaper photograph of herself and a client from 1997. Richard Buchanan, she said, had been charged in the rape and murder of 6-year-old Elizabeth Knapp, and all signs had pointed toward his guilt. Knapp's mother told the police that she had seen him having sex with the child the night of the murder, there were no signs that another man had broken into the house, and under questioning, Buchanan had not denied his involvement, saying only that he was drunk and didn't think he was capable of such a crime, Keshen said.
Months later, DNA evidence exonerated Buchanan and identified an upstairs neighbor with a criminal record as Knapp's murderer, Keshen said. Since then, she said she's kept the photograph pinned on her bulletin board as a reminder of the imperfections in the justice system and the potential for false convictions.
"The evidence in Richard's case of his guilt was very convincing, and I believed that my client was probably guilty," she said. "I don't think there was anyone who was more humbled than I was at that time."
Earlier coverage begins with this post.
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