Today's Concord Monitor reports, "Death penalty expansion D.O.A." It's by Annmarie Timmins.
It's unlikely the state's death penalty law will be expanded to include murder during a robbery or murders that are "especially heinous, cruel or depraved."
The House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee voted unanimously yesterday to recommend the bill be killed. The recommendation still must go before the full House.
Rep. Steve Shurtleff, a Penacook Democrat, said the bill was so broadly written that it could have made almost any murder a capital offense. "It was just a poorly drafted bill," Shurtleff said. "It was very vague."
At a hearing yesterday, some questioned what murder wouldn't be considered "cruel" or "heinous" as described by the bill.
Under the existing law, seven crimes are punishable by death: the murder of a police officer; murder for hire; and murder during a kidnapping, rape, drug deal or burglary. Murder while serving life without parole is also a capital offense.
Burglary was added last year in response to a machete and knife attack that left a Mont Vernon woman dead and her daughter badly injured. Rep. Ross Terrio, a freshman Republican from Manchester, introduced his bill to expand it further to close what he considered a "loophole" in the existing law.
"House panel says no to language change in death penalty statute," is by Tim Buckland for the New Hampshire Union Leader.
A state House committee has unanimously recommended that the full House kill a bill that would have expanded the death penalty to include murders which are considered "especially heinous, cruel, or depraved."
“We decided that the language was very subjective,” said Rep. Elaine Swinford, R-Center Barnstead, chairwoman of the House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee said of House Bill 1706. “It would have put an undue burden on prosecutors and the attorney general.”
And:
The state has executed 24 people since the executions of Penelope Henry and Sarah Simpson on Dec. 27, 1739, on murder charges. The last was in 1939. The state now has one convict on death row, Michael Addison, who murdered Manchester police officer Michael Briggs in 2006.
Earlier coverage from New Hampshire begins at the link. Related posts are in the state legislation index.
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