NH House set to vote on reinstituting the death penalty

New Hampshire repealed the death penalty in 2019. (Photo by Dana Wormald/New Hampshire Bulletin)

The New Hampshire House of Representatives will vote on whether to resurrect New Hampshire’s death penalty Thursday.

House Bill 1413, sponsored by Belmont Republican Rep. Douglas Trottier, seeks to reinstitute the death penalty in New Hampshire. This comes more than six years after the state Legislature repealed New Hampshire’s death penalty in 2019. However, Gov. Kelly Ayotte — a former attorney general — has been vocal about her desire to bring it back.

The House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee, which considered the bill over the past few weeks, has bucked the governor’s requests. On Feb. 4, the committee voted unanimously, 13-0, to recommend that the entire House reject this bill. They cited moral objections, new advancements in DNA testing that have disproven previous murder convictions, financial concerns over the high cost of lethal injections and other methods, data that shows capital punishment doesn’t deter crime, and a low homicide rate in New Hampshire relative to other states.

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“The bottom line is, in my mind, only five or six years ago, we decided as a state to do away with capital punishment,” Rep. Terry Roy, chairman of the committee, said before the vote. “Things haven’t gotten any clearer in the last five or six years. Actually, to the contrary, we have seen, still, people continuing to have convictions overturned based on DNA evidence. We’ve seen our government at different levels become more contentious and fractious. And in my mind, I don’t think we want to empower our government with the ability to kill its own citizens.”

The bill has been placed on the consent agenda for Thursday, which means — unless lawmakers decide to remove it from the consent agenda — the bill won’t be debated on the House floor before it’s voted on in a batch vote alongside other bills that got unanimous or near-unanimous votes in committee.

The bill was one of two death penalty bills proposed this year. House Bill 1730, sponsored by Salem Republican Rep. Joe Sweeney, sought to institute the death penalty for child molesters whose offenses involve sexual penetration. However, the House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee amended the bill before advancing it.

“The amendment does away with all of the death talk,” Rep. Jennifer Rhodes, the Winchester Republican who proposed the amendment, said.

The amended version of the bill would make sexual assault of a minor over whom the perpetrator holds a position of authority a felony rather than a misdemeanor. The committee voted unanimously to recommend the entire House approve the bill with its amendment. That bill is also on the consent agenda for Thursday.