A year after members of the New Hampshire House of Representatives voted to criminalize the death penalty, legislators introduced a bill that would increase the scope of individuals eligible for capital punishment to include "home invaders with the intent of murder," according to State Rep. Robbie Parsons, R-Strafford, a member of the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee. Due to the Republican majority, lawmakers expect the bill to pass the House if it reaches a vote, State Rep. David Pierce, D-Grafton, said.
When the House voted to eliminate the death penalty in March 2009, there was a Democratic majority. After Gov. John Lynch, D-N.H., vetoed the bill, the House lacked supermajority support or a two thirds vote to override the veto, according to Roger Berube, D-Strafford.
Those who attended the bill's proposal hearing on Jan. 27 in the State House Hall of Representatives heard over three hours of testimony, Parsons a member of the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee, said.
"Hearings are usually held in the regular hearing room, but we moved it to the Hall of Representatives because of the anticipation of a large crowd," he said. "It was a very snowy day and my guess would be that there were still 50 or 60 people there, and at least half spoke."
Attempts to expand the state death penalty legislation were prompted by the 2009 murder of Kimberly Cates, who was attacked by four young men with machetes in her Mont Vernon, N.H., home. Her 11-year-old daughter was also stabbed but survived the attack, according to Parsons.
Such efforts are also influenced by the 2001 Zantop murders, when two young men murdered Dartmouth professors Half and Susanne Zantop in their home in Etna, N.H, Parsons said.
Speaker of the House William O'Brien, R-Hillsborough, is sponsoring the bill, according to the Associated Press.
"Though we cannot change the outcome of the heinous murder of Kimberly Cates, we must prevent such senseless tragedies from happening again," according to a statement Shannon Shutts, O'Brien's press secretary, released to The Dartmouth.
Pierce said that although he will vote against the bill for moral reasons, he expects it to pass based on Republican votes.
"Other than scatterings here and there, it would be my best guess that the vote will go along party lines," Pierce said. "There also is the variable that the Republican caucus seems to be split between people that consider themselves libertarians and establishment conservatives the libertarians typically try to keep government at a minimum, and it might be that this is seen as the ultimate governmental weapon, so I just don't know how they'll vote."
Parsons said he has not yet decided how he will vote due to the complexity of the legislation.
Representatives will rewrite part of the legislation to fix "technical difficulties with the language" in time for members of the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee to vote on the bill on Feb. 10, State Rep. Laura Pantelakos, D-Rockingham, said.
"I think the bill will pass if it comes out properly written," she said. "There are not enough Democrats to stop it."
Since the bill has not yet been voted on by the Committee, O'Brien has not yet placed the bill on the agenda for a House vote, Parsons said. If the legislation passes the House and Senate and is signed by Lynch, the law may be instituted by the end of this legislative session, he said.
Increased spending that will accompany such a change in legislation may render the bill undesirable, Pierce said.
"At a time when Republican leadership in the House promised to focus on our budget, saying we need to work on deficit and improve the economy, they are proposing higher spending because it is more expensive to process people under capital murder statute than to incarcerate them for life without possibility for parole," Pierce said.
An expansion of death penalty legislation is not a viable solution for decreasing violent crime since more stringent statutes in other states have proven ineffective, according to Rep. Robert Berube, D-Strafford, a member of the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee. "If you look at research for example in Texas, where there are executions taking place the thing is, people still murder and the death penalty doesn't have much of an effect," he said.
